Scene I.--HEROIC

All that thou sayest I can bear unmoved; for thou hast a voice bereft of power, like a shadow. Thou canst do nought but talk.--_Euripides_.

It was dusk when Drayton entered the parish of Thorlund, after a wearisome railway journey, and a long tramp of nine miles from the station. He walked straight to the partly-open iron gate, without pausing to seek information from a homeward-bound ploughman, the only being whom he met upon the road. He knew he had reached the Strath. He felt that he had known the place all his life. To one born and brought up in the metropolis, to struggle for daily bread, it was a joy to see that wilderness of flowers, and to breathe the heavy perfume wafted across the grass. The weary man pushed at the gate and passed in. Great stagbeetles were droning across the bushes. He removed his hat reverently, and waded through the tall herbage towards the house.

His eyes were heavy, as though with sleep, when he reached the door and rapped upon it, gently at first, then loudly, and finally with an energy akin to fury.

He had no idea how long an interval elapsed, before an old woman shuffled across the hall, and held up a sharp white face to hear what he had to say. She was short-sighted, deaf, and asthmatic, incapable of deep feeling, untroubled by emotions. This poor creature had been on the eve of being cast out “broke” from the cottage home of her relatives; and the rector, hearing of it by chance, had rescued her for a time, and secured her poor services for the owner of the Strath. The influence of the house failed with her, perhaps because there was in her so little that was capable of responding to its dramatic power.

“Mr. Conway,” she whined sadly. “He is walking in the orchard.”

Drayton recrossed the weedy moat and walked away, plucking flowers as he went, pushing them into his button-holes, the brim of his hat, behind his ears, and even into his hair; and when they fell replacing them with others.

A ragged hedge appeared before him, and beyond were apple and pear trees with sparse foliage fluttering and whispering above mossy trunks. Hearing a human voice, Drayton peered through a gap to behold the man whom he had come so far to seek, walking through the long grass among the drooping branches, reading aloud from a book, and smiling as he read. Pausing close beside the hedge which concealed Drayton from his view he recited thoughtfully:

“I profess I know not what to think, but still there are some scruples remaining with me. Is it not certain I see things at a distance? Do we not perceive the stars and moon, for example, to be a great way off? Is not this, I say, manifest to the senses?”

“It is manifest,” muttered Drayton, as he tumbled stupidly through the hedge.

Not a sign of surprise crossed Conway’s white face, when the apparition fantastically dressed with flowers stood by him in the fading light. He continued his even paces, after motioning to the visitor to keep step at his side; and when Drayton obeyed the two men walked on through the orchard to the music of the evening, regarding one another, if they considered the matter at all, as spiritual beings unnecessarily encumbered with flesh.

“Tell me, my friend,” said the late debauchee, who in his former state had hated the sight of books and the thought of philosophy, “what was the cause that impelled the rustic mentioned by Horace to lie on the bank of the stream, waiting until the waters should pass? Have we there ignorance in its most inexplicable form, or a super-normal belief in the wonder working power of faith?”

“Or a passionate longing for a revolution of nature’s laws,” Drayton added in the same gentle manner. “So often had he watched the flow of the stream that the sight may have wearied him. His wish might have suggested a half-belief that the source had failed, that the waters were actually flowing away, that any moment might witness their final exhaustion. Perhaps again, in monstrous arrogance, the fool believed that he stood beyond the law and at his word the waters would be stayed.”

“When the brain has been wrought upon by insanity the sufferer will lift himself to the plane of godship,” Conway mused, drawing down a mossy branch and gazing thoughtfully at the little emerald apples. “But our author assumes that his hero is sane.”

“Yet we are unable to deduce sanity from his actions,” Drayton argued. “There are limits to the imaginings of ignorance. The most insensate mortal knows that the apple, if detached from the bough, will fall to the ground. The observation of countless generations of ancestors has imbued him with so much knowledge. Instinct alone should advise him that the river must flow continually.”

“I acknowledge it,” Conway murmured. “The sanest philosopher is also the humblest. He who loses his reason holds up giants and examines them through a microscope.”

They continued to pace the orchard through the thickening air; and Conway still felt no astonishment at finding Drayton by his side, attired in a suit of his own clothes. As for the latter he had certainly some dim remembrance of a visit to a pawn-shop, of a landlord waiting for the overdue rent, and of a back attic in a noisy street; but such matters were very distant and indistinct. Had he been told he had pawned the masks a decade ago, or even assured he had not pledged them at all, he would have assented.

“Is this happiness?” he inquired of his companion.

“Wonderful happiness,” Conway answered. “I sleep much. My head aches a little, but it is no pain. It is a gentle heaviness, which does not cloud my vision. When I am awake I read. After supper I will read to you. The house is full of books.”

“Do you hear voices?”

Conway shook his head with a sleepy smile.

“It is always peaceful here.”

“To-morrow I shall write,” went on the uneducated man confidently.

They went by slow periods to the house.

The deaf old woman had no culinary skill, therefore the meal awaiting them was of the plainest--thin soup, a piece of mutton, a milk pudding, and a little fruit. Both men were silent, Conway reading from a book beside his plate, Drayton already absorbed upon the first act of a play which he intended to begin at once. When his host rose he also pushed back his chair, and they stood gazing at one another foolishly, until Conway pointed towards the flight of stairs. Side by side they crept up into the darkness.

Passing along the passage they entered a windowless room cumbered with much furniture and mouldy books; a great bed, heavily draped, occupied the centre; the carpet had been eaten away, and the rotten planks crumbled beneath their tread; a sofa and two chairs occupied spaces at the foot of the bed, and between the chairs stood a marble table, and upon the table two candles in bronze candlesticks, which when lighted revealed also a manuscript book in shagreen covers and a floriated cross. On one arm of this cross some long vanished hand had scratched the name of Winifred; on the other Geoffrey in similarly tremulous characters.

Drayton seated himself upon the sofa, and drawing the heavy draperies apart admitted light across the bed. There was nothing to be seen, except a mass of tumbled garments, and a black heap which might once have been a wreath of flowers.

There came a scurrying of rats from beyond the wainscoting, and after that silence.

“What room is this?” asked Drayton, as he permitted the damp curtains to fall and close.

“The bedroom of Winifred Hooper,” Conway replied, without raising his eyes from a closely written page, dated along the margin January 14th, 1742. The writing was fine, and perfectly distinct, sloping from left to right, blurred occasionally by the damps of time, or perhaps by tears from the writer’s eyes. The master of the house snuffed the candles, and said:

“I found this book to-day, in that cupboard beside the fireplace. It is the journal of one who formerly lived in this house. I will read you a few pages, and if you grow weary, or desire to sleep, put up your hand and I will cease.”

Drayton was huddled at the end of the sofa, his arms folded tightly across his breast, his eyes fixed upon the cross. He made a motion of assent, and straightway the host began to read:

“I write to you, my Geoffrey, although I know you may never see these lines, therefore I will not commence with Beloved, or My Love. Such words spring warmly from my heart, but lie as cold as snow upon these pages. Yet I write them. ’Tis but a little happiness. I am alone in the wind. It is so cold a wind. It howls round the house, and enters this room, to make my candle flicker. Snow has been falling all the day, and the garden lies buried, and the great tombs in the churchyard are covered with white sheets. The dead shall sleep to-night more warmly than I. My father is playing chess with Mr. Blair, the rector of Thorlund, in the saloon. At the end of their game a summons will come for me, and I must go down and sing. They say my voice is beautiful, but that is because I sing to you, and sometimes you seem so near that tears will come into my eyes, and my voice will tell again what it has already told, and would so gladly tell again, until I hear the drunken parson thumping his great shoes upon the floor, and shouting, ‘My God! She sings like Farinelli.’

“Let me tell you how I have passed this day. In the morning I walked out. It was so still, and winter fog was lying along the valley. I heard the horses stamping in the stable, and saw the white mist steaming off the moat, while I scattered bread for my hungry sparrows. (Pardon this careful account of my trivial actions, Geoffrey. I could not write if I did not hope that Providence might place this little book into your hands some day, perhaps when you are wedded, and I am in the vault. You will not be false to your wife if you kiss this page, because my hand has rested for a cold hour upon it.) Then I walked into the plantation, and beneath the bushes were snowdrops, so pale and white. They seemed to be shivering and to say, ‘Why does the sun not shine?’ But I knew that it was I who shivered, because the snow flowers are children of the winter, and I am made for the bluebell and the rose. Do you, I wonder, sometimes recall to mind that daffodil I plucked and gave to you last spring? I planted a chestnut beside the bulb, and the tiny tree grows strongly and the daffodil will come up again this spring in just the same spot, and will bear a bloom like that I gave to you, but you will not be here to take it from my hand.

“That same day, while walking with me through the plantation, you stepped upon and crushed a crocus. After you had gone, I went back for the bulb, and planted it in a box which stands beside me now. The divided bulb has sent up two little spikes of bloom, but one is very much stronger than the other. The weak one is mine, the strong is yours. Mine will flower last and fade first. I cannot water mine without watering yours, or I would be selfish and make the spears of equal strength.

“During the afternoon I walked to Queensmore to visit my uncle the vicar, a man I cannot love, because he is so hard, and I fear a miser also. The wheels of the coaches had beaten down the snow, but it was slippery to walk, and once I went down. Had you been there you would have taken me up, and carried me against my will--so I would have declared--down Stone Hill, as you carried me once when my foot gave me pain from the sign-post to the village stocks. A coach passed me, the guard blowing upon his horn as though to warm himself, the passengers very cold and miserable, the poor horses sadly weary. A woman in the basket called, ‘Good-luck, pretty dear,’ and I started when I understood the good wish was intended for me. It cheered me on my lonely walk. I am sure the sharp wind had put colour into my face and brightened my eyes. Perhaps I was pretty then. But I am white again now, and the mirror opposite tells me that my prettiness was borrowed after all. It was only for the hour. And, Geoffrey, you were not there to see it.

“The bushes are covered with berries this winter, and I am glad to know that my singing-birds will not starve. But I have found some stiff little bodies upon the road. There is miseltoe in our orchard, but none has been brought into the house. On Christmas night my father was out late, and when he returned drank deep, and would have beaten me, for no fault whatsoever save that I had seen him come home, had I not run from him and hidden in the lumber-room. No Yule log burnt in this house; no hackin, nor turkey, nor plum-porridge was served at our table; the village mummers did not enter this garden; and when I heard the bells a-ringing I shut myself in my room and tried to be brave. I had seen woodmen hauling the Yule log merrily towards Kingsmore, and Mr. Price himself was sitting atop, with a great branch of holly in his hand, singing a carol with all his might. They are merry folk at Kingsmore. I could hear their drums and fifes on Christmas Eve, and Deborah tells me the whole company gambolled and danced all night, and their boar’s head was one of the largest seen, and their masque the most diverting, and their ale the finest ever brewed. Happy that ’tis given to some to spend their lives in giving pleasure to their fellow-men. Deborah tells me also, or will whisper it rather, how that she heard the phantom bells in the long pasture between here and Queensmore.

“But, Geoffrey, I wander. Would you desire to hear of my uncle, whom I found this afternoon in his study, sitting without a fire, a red cloak round him, and stiff white gloves upon his hands? I think you would rather I wrote about myself. I will promise you I am no bigger than when you saw me last, and then you thought me, I fear, somewhat too small a person to contain a heart so big with love. But there, wise sweetheart, you were deceived. My face has not greatly changed. My eyes are just as blue, but as they look back at me from the mirror they do not smile. I would not have them try, because happiness cannot cannot be forced. I see I have written the word cannot twice. I have a little scar upon my wrist, which was not there when you departed. Shall I tell you how it came? But, no! I would not have you think me impatient. I am like the willow tree beside the stream, which yields to every blast, and rises forgetful of the few weak leaves that the wind has taken away.

“I have been to the window in the passage. The snow is deep and smooth, and all the world is silent. What a pitiless thing is this frost, and yet how kindly does it work! It soothes the unprotected into sleep, and draws life away, so painlessly, so gently. How different from cruel man or beast. Yesterday I discovered my cat playing with a poor mouse. I took the little thing from her, but alas, it shivered once and died in my hand. I could have cried for it. I knew!

“My candle is burning out. I would gladly seek warmth in my bed, but dare not while the noise below continues. Where are you, Geoffrey? Oh, my love, I know you will play the man amid the wicked society of our time. I pray you shun the court, the painted faces, the cringing favourites, shun also the gaming-house, and the cockpit. Nay, I mean no harm. My father is shouting for me upon the stairs. Ah, Geoffrey! Come again.”