CHAPTER X

There came an early April day when Alexander walked from school and felt that, though he was alone, a stranger went with him. Thus companioned, he passed through the streets of the little town, out on to the wild moorland country, and so to a pass between the hills and a pathway worn by his own feet. The sun was very bright and warm, and he sat down by a tarn where the wind blew the rushes. Pleasant shivers of cold mingled with the warmth on his back, and in his throat there was an exultant aching. He did not know himself; he was a new person, for he was drinking deep of a heady cup. He was to go to Oxford in the autumn.

He lay on his back and watched the clouds, but he did not see their procession; he saw his own. Success following success kept time with the filmy white across the blue, and then a future as wide as the expanse of sky was opened to him. In his dreams he filled and overflowed the place offered to him by a welcoming world, but, finding himself unduly swelling, he sat up with a start, warning himself not to be a fool. He had a hard head, and, long ago, he had learnt many kinds of self-control, and he did not mean to indulge his imagination more than his appetites.

"It's nothing, anyway," he muttered. He looked at the ruffled water and shivered with it; he looked at the new green of the hillsides, where defiantly black rocks, starting out of it, proclaimed their perpetuity, and his heart turned sick with dread of going away. He could not do it, he told himself; he could not live outside his own place, yet, while he swore, he knew that he would do it, and he ceased protesting, for he had a horror of pretence. He would go, but would he be doing right? He thought of his mother on winter nights, sitting in the kitchen alone, listening for a step; he heard the wind crying round the house, and for once allowing himself to feel with her, he knew the trouble of her heart as she waited with none but the dog for company, and perhaps the spirit of the dead woman who had been a witch. Ought he to go? he asked again. "But I will go," he said aloud.

He walked homewards, and he went lingeringly, more eager to feel the young heather under his feet than to tell his news. A few months, and he would walk on pavements; he would not breathe this wonderful, uplifting air. The sound of mountain water would only come to him in thoughts, and when he woke at night he would think the Blue Hill looked down on him until, leaping out of bed, as was his way, he would find nothing but grey walls and grass. He would hear the chiming of many clocks and, looking from his window, he would find the world empty for lack of the mountains and the babbling water and the smell of the uninhabited night.

He sat down again. A turn of the path had brought him to a wider view. The hills here stretched their arms to hold the valley, and he saw the white walls of his home, the silver snake of water winding to the lake, the fringing trees, birches and mountain ash, and the dark cluster of the yews with the church roof shining in the midst of them, under the sun. The smell of peat rose warmly from the earth and the bleating of lambs was sweet in his accustomed ears. One had to pay dearly for conquests and satisfied desires, he found, and he was willing to pay the price demanded--the price of exile. "But it'll not be for all the year," he consoled himself; and then he wondered that he had not rejoiced at the promised separation from his father. What had once seemed a necessity for decent life had now fallen back among the unimportant things. He was learning much.

"I'd live with ten like him, and hate them all, if I could live here," he said, and went on slowly, all his senses alert and greedy to gather stores against the future famine.

His mother glanced up, smiled and nodded as he appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Tea's ready," she said. It was her daily greeting.

He nodded in his turn and stood on the threshold with his hands in his pockets, watching the waving larches. They spoke to him in a language he could not interpret, but understood. He felt an unyouthful and transitory desire to remain rooted as they were, a desire for peace and life without a struggle. If he stayed here, Janet would give him work; he would like it well enough, and things would be simpler so. He considered the proposal with the calm interest of one who has no doubts. He was going to Oxford almost as surely as he was going to die. He was ambitious: he wanted what the place could give him; he wanted and dreaded the companionship of other men, the combat of minds opposed, the communion of kindred ones, learning, knowledge of humanity. He would get these and the hills would remain; wherever life might lead him, he would come back to them and they would still be here.

"There's a letter for you," said Clara.

He took it from the table. "It's from Edward Webb."

"Yes. I've had one, too."

Alexander opened his. A short note, tremulous as the man, asked leniency for an enclosure which Alexander pocketed. "He's not been here for months."

"No, but he says he'll be coming soon. He's been going home when he could. His wife isn't well, and I think he's worried, poor little bit of a man!"

"He's a big man," he said, and thought of Janet's dream.

"Well, you know," she said good-humouredly, "I think of all of you as children. Look what he has sent."

"This will never be Theresa," said Alexander. Dark eyes looked merrily at him from the picture, a soft mouth smiled, a nose, very slightly tilted, provoked to pleasure.

"No, that's Grace. Here's Theresa. I can't think how he came to have a girl like Grace: he's plain enough in the other one."

He looked long at Grace, for she had a delicate warmth of beauty hitherto unknown to him. It made him think of southern sun, ripe fruits, round, bare limbs, and brilliant wines.

"She's a dancer, isn't she?" He had a vague and ashamed wish to see her feet and petticoats, and he thrust the photograph aside. Frowning, he walked to the door. He felt himself unclean, and he bathed his eyes in the coolness of mountain stream and wood. Then he looked at Theresa. She came like another breath of wind. Grace was a girl to him, but Theresa was a child, and her eager look would never have a sensuous appeal: it was of the open air, of water and of wind. Her lips were closed as on a sudden determination, her eyes were light and shining, she seemed to speak the tongue of all creatures in love with the war of life; but he thought of her at once as of a little leaf blown from a birch-tree, but a leaf that leapt in the wind because it chose to do so, and with a firm intention of being blown only where it wished to go.

"I like her," he said aloud.

"She isn't pretty."

"No." He felt there was something indecent in prettiness. "Let's put Theresa on the mantelpiece."

"Grace shall go in the parlour. She is an ornament."

"I've got that scholarship," he said abruptly. "I heard at school. There'll be a letter here to-morrow." She stood silent for an instant, and he saw a deeper colour creep over her cheeks.

"I knew you'd get it." She kissed him. "Bless you, my son! I knew you'd get it."

"Oh, Mother!"

"I did, or why did I buy all that flannel for your shirts? I've made three of them already. Your father's in the garden. Go and tell him."

"You can."

"No, you do it. Alexander, it'll mean a lot to him."

"I don't believe it, unless getting rid of me's a lot."

"You're hard, Alec. In all his life he's had no success but this of yours, and he'll be pleased. You don't know how much--how much he cares for you."

"Oh, that----" he said, and paused in his walk to the door. "How will you do without me? Winter coming on, and--he gets worse."

"He takes less," she said sharply.

"He'll take longer dying," was his thought, but he said, "Sometimes. But he's more restless. He's not responsible. I believe he's possessed." Again he thought of Janet and of the dead witch.

"Don't say such things! Possessed, indeed! He's not responsible; but why, poor soul? Because his father was a bad old man. He can't help himself. It's wicked the way a man's vice can come crawling after his son. Wicked! It turns me from my prayers sometimes."

"There's a bad chance for me. You'll never have thought of that, perhaps."

"I'm your mother as well as his wife, my lad; but you're strong, Alec. I've given you my strength. And he's weak. But for all that he's the one man in the world for me, so mind what you say of him! He's the one man. You'll know some day. Why, if I saw him doing murder, I'd just wipe the blood off his poor hands." She ended, and then, hearing the echo of her own words, she looked at him with an approach to shyness. "You think I'm mad."

"No, I think you're wonderful. You're--you're grand," he stammered.

She laughed, and waved him towards the door. "Tell him," she said.

Alexander crossed the yard and leaned his arms on the garden wall. His father was on his knees before a box of seedlings. His face with the heavy moustache drooping over the weakness of his bearded chin was alight with eagerness, his fingers were delicate amid the tender green, the sun struck on the thinness of his hair. Alexander felt a new pity for him.

"I've got some news for you," he said, with timid geniality.

"Eh?" A frown appeared. "Don't worry me. I'm transplanting."

"I know. They look healthy. Tea's ready, and I've got yon scholarship."

James Rutherford stood up to his full length. He rubbed his soiled hands together, put them in his pockets, and drew near to the wall, until his face was close to Alexander's. "So you've got the scholarship," he said slowly. "Well, I'll not be sorry to be rid of you, my lad, but I'm damned proud of you." He stared at him as though he saw a stranger. "Damned proud," he repeated.

* * * * *

It was as he went to bed that Alexander remembered the supposed genius of Theresa. He had seen no signs of it. Only the ardour of her personality was clear to him in the picture. Could that be a kind of genius? He hoped not. He did not want to admit her to the clan of which he hoped he was a member. He could not imagine himself mediocre, he must be something in excess, and like claims from this little girl who had charmed him all the evening, would inexplicably annoy him. He admired women; but he liked them to be great in character rather than in intellect, and something in him refused to believe in the rareness of Theresa's mental qualities. But he liked her and, a few weeks later, he pleased Edward Webb by saying so.

"Ah, I thought you would. She's vivid, isn't she? One misses her colouring in the photograph, but she speaks, I think."

Alexander turned aside the threatened monologue. "I'm much obliged to you for letting me see the verses."

"You had them? You did not mention them. I thought perhaps--foolish of me, no doubt, but all one makes is dear to one--I had hoped for criticism: you want to spare me, but I am not afraid."

Alexander was embarrassed. "I can't criticize you. What do I know about it?"

"You could help me. I have no one else. And I trust your judgment. As a favour----"

"Well, then, I'll ask one of you. Will you come often while I'm away, and let me know how things are going? And just tell me how the hills are looking, will you?"

* * * * *

Autumn found him in Oxford, miserable but acutely alive. At first his country speech and his country clothes made him painfully conspicuous to himself. He seemed to be moving in a strong light which drew unfriendly eyes, but gradually his sober, native confidence returned. There were times when he suffered; but he thought no less of himself because he wore garments which seemed designed to conceal the lithe strength of his frame, and could not speak the jargon of the men about him, for the calibre of his mind was as good as that of other folks, and he knew it. Once sure of that, he settled down to drink steadily of all life could give him of knowledge and experience: he did it with the stubborn persistence natural to him, and though he became absorbed he was never happy. Here there was too much talk, and he never ceased to be heartsick for the hills.