Scene III.--TRAGEDY

Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined circle must conclude and shut up all.--_Sir. T. Browne_.

While the two clergymen were in the dining-room the expected change in the weather occurred. When Mr. Price rode away, having decided to postpone his visit to the Strath, the sun was wrapped up in dense clouds, there was no sky, and the light was fading rapidly.

For some time Dr. Berry sat with a book in his study. Then he ventured upon the lawn to observe the heaving clouds, which each moment threatened to burst into lightning. There was not a breath of wind. The trees in the garden beyond were entirely without motion; the walls appeared to have no substance, and the very house seemed to float away into unreality. Afar the watcher sighted the chalk-pits on the downs, their white sides glowing fiercely against a sombre background.

“It is the hour of tragedy,” he murmured.

Here, as in the ancient drama, the actors played their parts in the open air, in order that their passions might blend with the fury of the elements. The proscenium, as in old time, was made by nature. The wall of the Strath formed the back-scene; the theatre was the garden; the orchestra that mound on which the sun-dial stood. Already the storm-cocks were chattering there, and their notes came into the doctor’s ears like the piping of flute-players.

“I must go,” said the dreamer with a slight shiver.

Passing back to the house he quickly reappeared carrying a small wooden box. He crossed the churchyard, where the sexton was digging a grave, singing hoarsely as he shovelled up the dirt. The man touched his hat and said, “Looks like a storm coming up yonder, sir. But the sun shines above Kingsmore.”

The rector hesitated, and asked absently, “Whose grave is that?”

“’Tis for old Jim Reeve, sir. Him as died a Tuesday, and is to be buried to-morrow.”

“Ah yes,” the doctor murmured, adding to himself as he passed on, “I thought it might be the grave of Henry Reed.”

The door in the wall was unlocked. Dr. Berry had felt assured that it would be so. He entered and stood within the influence of the garden.

The air no longer thrilled with the note of mirth, the intoxicating happiness and the exuberant laughter were gone. Instead of the sunshine sorrow brooded, and the flowers were shut, and a moaning came from the rotten gables of the house. The tragic note was dominant, and all the grotesque sounds of mirth were stilled.

Fully possessed by the influence, the priest ascended the mound and extended his white hands over the dial, which represented to him no longer a recorder of the flight of time, but an altar sacred to Bacchus. He opened his box, scattered its contents upon the metal slab, and applied a light. Then, as a filmy cloud of incense rose in a long thread into the gloom, he tramped slowly round the knoll reciting an Argive song.

No sane voice spoke from his inner consciousness to remind him that this was worse than folly; that he was offering sacrifice to a mythical deity. He was merely playing the part which had been allotted him, and reciting those words which were suitable to the occasion as they presented themselves to his memory. The impending storm was, he believed, about to break upon the house; and it was not to be dispelled until the last words had been spoken, the tragedy accomplished, and the stage abandoned.

The rain came, and the lightning, and then strong wind which sent leaves whirling across the knoll. But there came no sound from the house. Through the rain and the thunder and the wind moved the old atmosphere of fate and despair and the conquest of unbending human will. The Thymele streamed and smoked no more; but the elements fought on as the accompaniment of the drama, and the piping of the invisible storm-cocks became shriller and more stern.

Again the mood changed, and Dr. Berry was driven forth like a villain to the hisses of the wind. Instead of returning home he took the field path which led beside the beech wood; and ascended until he reached the summit of a grass hill where larches were odorous in the hot sunshine. Pausing there he looked out, and saw the growth of sable cloud above Thorlund and the lightning crossing it and the white steam of the rain ascending.

A rabbit bounded among the larches into the open, and after it came a female figure, young and lithe, her face tanned by exposure to the weather, her great eyes unashamed. At first sight she was beautiful; at the second pathetic, because the light in her eyes lacked reason. She bounded up to the rector, flung herself at his knees, and burst into a noisy incoherent prayer.

“Get up, girl,” cried the scholar, dragging her almost roughly from the grass. “How often must I tell you this is wrong?”

“Here are flowers for you,” cried the girl, pressing a quantity of pale-blue and white harebells, warm and withering, into his hand. “They are always ringing, and I am tired of their noise. Take them and curse them. They will stop that wild nodding of their heads for you. Why will you not let me touch you? There is force coming out of your fingers, and when I hold your hand I see no longer the strange things in the wind. I have been among the larches, and in the white chalk-pits, and down by the stream, and in the cold churchyard, but I still see the strange things coming down the wind. And you too walk alone. Do you see figures? Have you seen the masked man running, and the white woman crying into the lilies? Do you see them in the garden in the valley?”

This girl, a well-known character of the neighbourhood, lived at Kingsmore with her grandparents, but was seldom to be found within the cottage of her relatives. Her real home was upon the grass hills, or in the dry beech wood, or down in the valley. Nancy Reed, Lone Nance as the villagers called her, passed about the country like a will o’ the wisp, talking to the birds and the creatures of her imagination, revelling in wind and shouting through storm. Yet for all her wild speech she was as gentle as a child, although perfect reason had been witheld from her all the twenty-four years of her life. She was sane enough to know that she was not as others, and her one desire was to become perfect and womanly; but relentless nature continued to bear her from place to place against her will, flinging her body about the hills like drift wood tossed upon the sea.

“You go into that garden with a book in your hand,” she cried, pointing into the vapours. “I watched you come out, your lips moving, and your face as white as that chalk. You saw and heard a great deal in that garden, and you were wondering what you had missed. If I had been nearer I would have told you.”

“You have never been in that garden,” said Dr. Berry sternly. “And you must never go.”

The girl laughed noisily into his face.

“That house is filled with sounds which you cannot understand. But if you go there much more, and sit under its shadow a few more years, you will begin to understand. And then you will come out and call for me, and we shall chase the sunbeams into the valley.”

The rector drew away from her. The note of inspiration was there and he had recognised it. It was true he had felt a slow unloosening of mind from body, an exaltation of the brain, and a tingling of each sense, while he had tarried in that garden. He had called this the birth of higher knowledge and the stirring of genius; but when the girl spoke he remembered that the bridge which separates the inspired from the diseased mind is perilously narrow and frail.

“I cannot keep away from the place,” he muttered, forgetful that Lone Nance was his listener. “I cannot stop my ears. I must go there, to sink into sleep and dream. It is good for me. The Aeolian poets walk at my side. I can describe their land, their speech, and their manners, as though I had lived in that far off time. Their language is as familiar to me as my own. I can enter into their moods. I can see where history has erred. I can make the crooked places straight. I can see the outlines of their figures and describe the very texture of their raiment. I can even detect the odour of Sappho’s anointed hair as she passes along the road to Mytilene.”

He stopped, remembering the status of the wild girl. She was looking beyond him into vacancy, her hands locked behind her back. The dark clouds were lifting from Thorlund, but the vapour still ascended like the mist of the genie from the fisherman’s vessel.

Twilight was trailing over the land as Dr. Berry descended, and the beech wood became a black sea, tossing and moaning with the voices of life. A labourer cutting hay stopped from his work and leaning upon his two-handled knife pulled at the brim of his hat as he peered down from the strong-smelling rick.

The rector looked closely at the man, until his sluggish memory awoke and suggested a name.

“Was it not your father who was taken ill? How is he now?” he asked, with a dim feeling that he had neglected his very inconsiderable parochial duties of late.

“Broke,” said the hay-cutter, abruptly and hoarsely. “Broke a week ago and been took. Sixty-one he wur, a good age for the likes of we.”

“I do not remember burying him. When was it?” Dr. Berry asked.

“’E didn’t not ’xactly die,” the man explained. “’E was took to the ’ouse, and so ’e be done to we. Us all get broke, some sooner, some later. Us can’t last for always. Father broke quick when ’e started, but ’is brother, my Uncle Tom as was, ’e took a terrible time. Us all said every fall, ‘’e’ll get broke this time for sure,’ but ’e’d pull through and laugh at us. ’E went sudden at the last. ’E’d been threshing all day, and ’bout evening ’e couldn’t carry. Tried time and time ’e did, but couldn’t carry. ’E walked ’ome, and sat down ’e did aside the fire, and ’e said, ‘I be broke.’ ’E was took that month.”

“Is he still alive?” the rector asked.

“Ay, sir. I saw ’im one day walkin’ the yard, when I druve the waggon by, but I didn’t want ’im to see I. When they gets broke they don’t come back no more. Some on ’em lasts a powerful time yonder too. But they ain’t of no account, and us don’t talk on ’em. Us ain’t got nothing to do wi’ they. I’ll get broke in my time. Us don’t think on’t till it comes.”

“Would it not have been possible for you to have kept your father out of the workhouse?” protested Dr. Berry. “You are in regular work with good wages, and an old man does not cost much to keep.”

The hay-cutter looked perplexed, and a trifle puzzled, at the scholar’s lack of very ordinary knowledge.

“Father wur broke, sir. ’E couldn’t earn no wages,” he explained.

“So I understand,” said Dr. Berry. “But did it never occur to you that you might maintain him? It should surely be the son’s duty to support the father in his old age.”

The labourer smiled more and more at the rector’s ignorance.

“They that be broke be took, sir,” he said heavily. “When I be broke I’ll be took, and my son will say, ‘Good-bye, father,’ and wait for ’is turn. Wife and me ’ave six children, and another comin’ ’fore harvest. I gets twelve shillun, and pays ’alf-a-crown rent and sixpence club money, and my wife and me live clear of charity. There ain’t no room for old folk along wi’ a big fambly. ’Sides, sir, it ain’t proper. Them that be broke, be took. And them that works get wages.”

“Good-night,” said Dr. Berry abruptly.

“Good-e’en, sir,” replied the hay-cutter gruffly.

“Broken in pieces like a potter’s vessel,” the scholar muttered as he walked away. “As we cast the sherds of shattered utensils from our houses, so are these men cast forth from their homes when their strength breaks and their utility as machines passes. There is matter for the thinker here, but it is colourless and cold. It lacks the warmth and glamour of the past.”

One last sunbeam passed over the hills and slanted across the Strath. From a point, where the grass road swung round, a side of the old house became visible, and a single window blinking in the middle of the light. Dr. Berry watched with shaded eyes, and suddenly came to a stop. There was a white figure bending across the window, and as he saw it the question of the wild girl flashed back: “Have you seen the white woman crying into the lilies?”

The same minute he was smiling, because a breath of wind had passed, shaking the foliage, and the white figure rocked in unison and vanished, as the sunlight died away. The shape had been caused by the ivy and a certain arrangement of the boughs of an elm acted upon by the white ray. The rector breathed more easily when the window became blank.

Yet he knew that the people of the hamlet would be saying that evening, “It is noisy in the Strath.” They who behold a tragedy see only the outward passions of the actors; of the influence which is behind they can see nothing. So one may watch the tree tormented by the wind, but not see the wind.

Supper was awaiting the poet, and he ate and drank mechanically. Then entering his study he spread his translations before him, and straightway became an Athenian, floating delicately through most pellucid air.

The poetic mountains breathed their influence into him over the deeps of time. Fragrant odours were in his nostrils, and in his ears the murmur of bees upon Hymettus. He passed restlessly to Olympus where the Gods were in council, and saw the Father aiming his thunderbolt, and like Menippus sat at the door whence issued the supplications of the world, and heard the petitions for wealth, honour, and long life repeated in shameless monotony. He heard also the prayer of Reed entreating that the terrible atmosphere might be dispelled, and he felt no sorrow when the frown on the thunderer’s brow remained unrelaxed. Through all the shifting figures he dimly perceived the table before him and the passionate iambics of Archilochus spread upon paper by his hand, and aloud he read, “My soul, my soul care-worn, bereft of rest.” And at that his head sank forward upon his breast.

The study window remained open, and moths and beetles blundered through to bombard the globe of the scholar’s lamp.

It was ten o’clock when the housekeeper knocked as usual at the door, and receiving no answer entered softly with her master’s bedroom candle and a cup of cocoa. Dr. Berry was leaning forward over the table, his face hidden upon his folded arms, a disabled ghost-moth floundering across his left hand. The woman noticed that the muscles of her master’s hands were standing out like cords.

“Your reverence,” she said.

The rector did not stir, and after repeating her call she muttered gently, “He’s been and tired himself again.” Then she turned down the flame of the lamp, drew it further from the sleeper, and retired softly, leaving the door ajar.

The tragedy was over; and the tired exarchus slept.

The next morning it became known about Thorlund and its neighbourhood that the owner of the Strath was dead. The woman who supplied him with milk had discovered the body lying across the threshold, its head towards the garden. Henry Reed had pitted his strength against the Strath; and the influence of the house had triumphed.

INTERLUDE

He was nothing better than a consumer of the fruits of the earth. “Dost thou then,” quoth I, “imply that we should name such a creature as this--as we do the drone in the bee-hive--a blot upon the community, a mere drone at home, and abroad a disgrace to the state?” “Even so, Socrates,” said he.--_Plato_.

The houses, which compose a street at no great distance from the trees of Gray’s Inn, are for the most part occupied by authors, artists, actors, and architects engaged, like Icarus, in making wings.

The first letter of our alphabet originated it is said from the hieroglyphic picture of an eagle. Followers of the four professions beginning with that letter are, strictly speaking, not wanted. Everybody must need letter B as represented by baker and butcher. But letter A suggests luxuries. The picture of the eagle is therefore appropriate. Authors, artists, actors, and architects must learn first to fly, and then to soar well above smaller birds, before they can win success.

The side posts of each door are studded with an amazing number of brass knobs, intended originally to be in communication with bells upon every floor, but at present restricted seemingly to the duty of exposing lilliputian milk-cans to the public view. These great houses, which in the time of the Georges were occupied by people of title, have become brick-and-mortar masks, hiding the sunken eye and hollow cheek of poverty, in addition to the shame of rake and harlot, from the view of the town. On the ground floor of Number 15 a middle-aged man was brushing a long-haired terrier beside the open window of a wide room panelled with oak. It was close upon ten o’clock, but breakfast was still waiting. The interior was moderately well furnished, although with the typical middle-class disregard for art. The pictures were for the most part prints depicting scenes of sport. There were also a few German photographs in doubtful taste, and one or two engravings of river scenery in blurred and fly-spotted frames. There was not a book to be seen, except one which was open upon the sofa, and that to judge by its broken back was in continual use. Its title was Ruff’s Guide to the Turf.

A well-built man of not more than thirty years, unbecomingly attired in a yellow dressing-gown and scarlet slippers entered the room. His haggard face, listless attitude, and general appearance of disgust with himself and his surroundings, suggested that he had been in the habit of guiding his life according to the traditions of the house. As the middle-aged man turned to welcome him, the profligate yawned profoundly and lowering himself into a chair pushed the hair off his forehead with an irritated gesture.

“So you’re here again,” he muttered. “Drayton, you’re a regular vampire, always after money or food. I suppose you would suck my blood literally, if you weren’t afraid of poisoning yourself. What is it this morning? Breakfast I suppose?”

The other--he was a poor scribbler, who made a precarious livelihood by contributing paragraphs to popular penny weeklies--stroked his stubbly chin, laughed, and removed the dog from the chair as carefully as through the animal had been made of precious porcelain.

“As a simple statement of fact I have slept upon your premises,” he said, indicating the sofa. “Have you forgotten who guided your weary footsteps homeward during the early hours of the morning?”

The profligate bent over the table and picked up a letter which was addressed to “Charles Conway, Esquire,” in copper-plate handwriting. He tore open the envelope, yawned again, and inquired of his companion whether at the time specified he, the questioner, had been very grossly drunk.

“A gentleman of private means never gets drunk,” said the parasite. “We apply that term to costermongers and coal-heavers. But you were, I fancy, rapidly approximating towards that Bacchic state which in classical language is described as _vino gravatus_. Even the policeman at the corner of the street, whom for some reason best known to yourself you insisted upon greeting most fraternally, would never, I am sure, admit that you were more than foot-sore; but then you presented him with a shilling, thereby obtaining your commission as captain. You wasted that shilling. I would have installed you as a Field Marshal for half the amount.”

“Eat the breakfast,” said Conway, as he transferred himself wearily to the sofa and unfolded his letter. “And don’t talk so much. My head is tender.”

Drayton hurried to the table and surrounded himself with victuals; but before beginning he looked across and suggested, “Better have something. Try a kidney and a piece of toast?”

“You can get me a bottle of beer and an apple,” said Conway in his jaded manner.

Drayton bustled to a cupboard, bent his rheumatic knees, and after an interval approached the sofa in the capacity of waiter, bearing the desired refreshment.

“A glass of milk would be more appropriate, considering the time of day, only you might insist upon having whiskey in it,” he said. “You will soon resemble Lord John Hervey, who, in this neighbourhood, and perhaps in this very room, breakfasted on an emetic, dined on a biscuit, and regaled himself once a week with an apple. Here is your ale--all white and yellow! You can imagine it is a poached egg.”

The younger man gave no heed to the parasite’s chatter. He was studying his letter with a frown. When it was finished he leaned back, drank his refreshment, looked at his watch, then read the letter again.

“Bring me the newspaper,” he commanded.

The scribbler was making famine in the land. He believed in eating well, entirely mistrusting the French proverb, which associates a good stomach with a bad heart, and pinning his faith rather upon the creed which teaches that virtuous folk have hearty appetites. His own poor line of business rarely afforded him the means for more than one substantial meal in the course of the day, and too often not that; so when opportunity was given to kill a hearty appetite without lightening his pocket he was never wont to be backward.

Rising obediently Drayton opened the newspaper, folded it with the sporting intelligence outward, and so handed it to his patron with the remark, “There is no change in the betting.”

Conway did not even glance at the sheet, which had been presented as a matter of course; but turning to the general news searched each column carefully. For several minutes there was silence, while the scribbler made ruin of the breakfast. Then Conway threw the paper down and resumed his former attitude.

“Give me a cigarette,” he ordered.

The other briskly left the table, complied with the demand, and as briskly returned. A coal cart rumbled by, and the Stentor in charge announced his business by a long ear-shattering yell.

The noise seemed to stir Conway into life. He paced across the room and set his back against the door. “Drayton,” he said, “I have heard some extraordinary news this morning. My uncle has been murdered.”

“Great Heavens!” exclaimed the writer, his jaws ceasing from their labours.

“Don’t worry your brain to find condolences,” said the other coolly. “I have never to my knowledge seen this particular relative, so I am in no need of sympathy, especially since I benefit by his death. But I want to know whether you have read anything of the murder of a Henry Reed? I see there is no mention in to-day’s paper.”

“Sympathy apart, it’s an awful business,” said Drayton, pouring himself out another cup of tea. “No, I don’t remember to have heard anything. How did it happen?”

“It seems, from the bare narrative here, to have been a remarkable affair altogether,” Conway answered. “My uncle returned from America only a few weeks ago, to take up his residence in an old house belonging to him which had not been occupied for ages. Last Sunday morning he was discovered by the milk-woman, lying dead across the threshold of the hall-door. It appears that the house has a queer sort of reputation, and it was at first supposed he had died of fright. But at the inquest it was shown that he had been strangled. And the curious part of it is that no stranger had been seen in the place, and it is impossible to suspect any of the inhabitants of the village.”

“The mystery of the haunted house,” muttered Drayton professionally. “Perhaps there will be a chance for me to do something here. Where is the place, Mr. Conway?”

The younger man came away from the door without answering and walked up and down, swinging the tassels of his dressing-gown. Suddenly he sat down at the table and poured himself out some tea.

“That’s right,” said the scribbler approvingly. “Nothing half so stimulating as tea. I hope I have left enough.”

Conway filled a cup and drank off the contents. While doing so he kept his eyes fixed upon two grotesque objects above the chimney-piece, one on either side of a picture which depicted Isinglass winning the Derby; and when he set the cup down he remained in the same posture, staring at a pair of brown masks representing Comedy and Tragedy.

“My head is full of wheels,” he muttered. “Come and hit me, Drayton, that I may be sure I am alive. I must have played the fool badly last night. I remember coming back from Sandown, and driving to some restaurant in the Strand. The next thing I can recall is groping round my room for a drink of water. My body aches and pricks, and my head feels as heavy as lead, and my eyes--Great Heavens! are those faces laughing at me?”

The elder man had finished eating at last. He came round the table and placed his hand soothingly upon the profligate’s arm.

“Come over to the window and get some air,” he said quietly. “You have been making a hot pace these last few months. You’ll be breaking if you don’t hold up.”

“Look!” muttered Conway, pointing at the masks.

“Turn your back on them,” said the scribbler. “What are you going to do about your uncle’s death?”

Again Conway disregarded the question. Turning from the wall to the furrowed features of his poverty-stricken companion, he exclaimed thickly, “Sit down, Drayton, and don’t bother me. Do you know why I have those masks hanging there? They are family heirlooms, copies I have been told of a pair made in Nuremburg, during the eighteenth century, by a crazy toy-seller. These belonged to my mother before her marriage, and her father had a pair like them.”

“Where are the originals?” inquired the listener.

“They have been destroyed. There was something uncanny about them, but beyond that I know nothing. This is the crest of the Reeds.”

Conway drew a ring from his little finger and held it out with an unsteady hand. The other took it and saw a white cameo, showing two masks, leaning together, a cap and bells over the forehead of the one, a dagger over the other. He returned the ring, with the grave remark, “But you are not a Reed.”

“My mother was. The family emigrated to America, and there my mother married into the Conway family, and returned with her husband to England. My uncle leaves his property to me, not because he could have loved me, but I suppose there was no one else to whom he could leave it.”

“Go down and see the place. The change will pick you up,” suggested the elder man. “It isn’t probable you will live there?”

“What, give up London to rot away in a lonely country house?” said Conway contemptuously. “Is it likely? If I cannot let the place I shall try to sell it. What are you doing with yourself to-day?”

“The usual thing,” replied the man who lived by his poor wits. “The British Museum reading-room, in chase of a guinea. I have earned nothing this week.”

“You shall have a guinea, if you will pack my bag and take it to Paddington. I am going to see my late uncle’s lawyer, and will meet you at the station about noon. You can occupy these rooms until I come back.”

The literary adventurer closed with this offer promptly; and a few minutes after mid-day a train drew out of London, carrying the profligate Conway towards the influence of the Strath.