CHAPTER XIV

On the last Saturday of that month, the sun, waking Theresa to the great emptiness of the world, robbed Alexander of the sleep which was his by right of holiday and, a moment later, the clamour of an energetic and triumphant hen dispersed his drowsiness.

As he lay and looked through the window and felt the wind on his face, he heard a kind of music in the noise, for in its unconscious, harsh insistence, there was a glorifying of life, joy in a creative gift, and praise for the wise use of it. It held, moreover, a call for energy, and Alexander, who had been born loving pre-eminence, could not consent to lie in bed while a hen prated of accomplishment. Murmuring gentle maledictions on the creature, he threw off his coverings and thrust his head and shoulders through the window.

It was six o'clock, and the earth seemed to have dipped its face in its own running water, and now, still glistening with drops, it was holding up its head that the wind might dry it. It was a light and frolic wind, taking pleasure in the vast spaces of the world and the youth of morning, whirling about the hill-tops, daring the dark and dripping gullies that rent the cliffs, yet not disdaining the rose-tree on the house wall, nor the points of Alexander's flannel collar and the roughness of his hair. Sharp at his throat it sent its cool, long fingers, and after them came the sunshine with a warm caress.

The ceasing of the hen's exultation brought a startling quiet, and through it there came softly a consciousness of water falling. From the Steep Water and the Broad Beck it was heard, a sound half of melancholy and half of joy, and sometimes it was loud, and again had a note so fading that silence caught at it.

There was a cap of cloud on the Spiked Crags, but the Blue Hill stood broad and clear, and when Alexander turned his head and looked seaward, he saw that shining thread of water, and the lake, and the lower hills lying under a pale and lofty sky.

Vague scents of flower and tree, of soil and wind, rose to his nostrils or went past him: he thought he smelt the very essence of the earth, he thought he felt God breathing on His world. Peace was spread on it like a hand, and in that blessing Alexander shared.

A homely sound drew him from the heights to which contemplation had carried him, and looking down, he saw a procession of brown and speckled hens, who lifted their feet delicately from the dust of the road, but did not refuse to peck in it. Dappling the little throng with white, three solemn ducks waddled heavily, and, last of all, like marshalls of the flock, the grey geese came, craning their necks and gobbling gently. They paused at the gate that lead into the field, argued for a while, and slipped, one by one, under the lowest bar.

Alexander followed them over the wet fields. He left his slippers at the gate, and went barefooted, for he was in love with the morning, and greedy of all it had to give: the damp earth was pressed into the arches of his feet, and the long grasses shook down their hanging drops. A blackbird sang to him as he swished by, and when he reached the pool under the birches, he thought it waited for him like a mistress who had no life but his. Not yet quite wakened from the night, it stirred languorously and spread dark arms to hold him, while the thin birch leaves fluttered on their stalks, quivering in a selfless joy.

He raised his eyebrows with a humorous, unequal lift, and looked deeply into the water he thus appropriated. He was amused, a little dismayed by a mood in which he tuned the world's music to his own key. His ambition might have seen men and things alike conquerable by his mind, but his vanity had never heard them as a refrain to the song of self, yet now a sparkling morning, a whistling bird, and wet grasses brushing on his feet, had made a coxcomb of him. That was the epithet he chose to use, for his proud youth would not confess the power of a summer morning on his austerity; yet, as he took the plunge into water which still held a memory of the snows, he was grateful to a cold that vanquished sentiment, and gave back freedom to the mountain stream. He felt he ought to ask its pardon on his knees, but he did not pause in his drying: the feeling, he thought characteristically, was enough, and, lifting his brows again and twisting his lips in company, he decided to keep the kneeling posture for the time when he should have learnt to pray, and with the remembrance that he had been at worship, if not at prayer, as he stood by his window and divined the immeasurable presence of God, he walked home soberly, absorbed in the problems of his own spirit, and heedless of the geese that cackled after him.

He found his mother kindling the kitchen fire and he watched her as he sat on the table and dried his hair. He had, for everything concerning her, an eye as keen as that of a woman or a lover: he took pleasure in the sure quickness of her hands, and the clear skin on the cheek she turned to him, yet his gaze had that parental quality which, still unsuspected, had influenced his dealings with her from boyhood. He saw how the brave back defied the grey that crept unwillingly through her hair, and he knew that neither age nor sorrow would ever daunt her, because love had given her an invincible supremacy. Years ago, with the wisdom of the threatened, her heart had challenged her mind to combat, and had beaten it, and thereafter she had made of it an ally, so that her defences were unassailable and her fears at rest. He understood. Had he not watched it all? At first he had seen her little shifts with scorn, he had felt pity for her determined blindness, and then his own sight had been cleared, and he looked straight into a maternal heart that awed him, though it pulsed so eagerly for the father that there was hardly room for the son. His training had been a hard and useful one, and his passions were well chained: he was rarely resentful: what was noble in him was truly glad of her captured happiness, and he had learnt to use towards her the indulgent tenderness which she kept for his father.

He laid aside his towel and stood up. "Let me do that for you."

She gave the laugh, not to be silenced by experience or proof, of the capable woman who hears man offering to do her work.

"No, it's alight at last. The sticks were damp. You forgot to bring them in last night."

"I'm sorry."

"I'll see to them in future."

"Oh, isn't that just you! I forget, once in three months, perhaps, and you talk as though it were only that once that I'd remembered."

She sat on her heels and smiled at him. "Nonsense! I'm juster than you, my son! And I like doing my own work."

"But this is mine. I gathered kindling wood for you as soon as I could walk, and I used the chopper before most children are allowed a table-knife. The smell of the woodshed and the fear I had of it at night! The door has the same creak yet, when there's a strong wind from the sea. I've suffered torments, crossing the yard in the dark, and I have my reward in remembering them. I'm going to get the wood for you till the end of time. It's bound up with the thought of the geese, and the smell of earth, and the sound of bees in the heather, and the wonder if I'll see my father striding out into the black when I'm coming in with my arms full. And it's queer how you end by loving the bad memories best. I think it will be because we're all proud to look back on trouble."

She heard disloyalty in his words. "Trouble! How much of it have you had? You've had your way in everything, you've never been thwarted." Her voice dared him to speak his thoughts. He was silent, but he had a vision of a small and solitary boy's figure moving always under a cloud that might open to let out thunderbolts. How he had feared, hated, and at last, when it failed to do more than darken his days, how he had despised it!

He looked in a kind of wonder at his mother. Her hands were folded in her lap in a pretence of calm, but he knew she held them tightly, that her heart went a little faster in her anger. Had she been unaware of his sufferings, or had she chosen to ignore them? Now, it did not matter. The horror was over: it had helped to make him what he was, and, were that good or bad, he answered truthfully when she turned to him with a sharp: "Well, why don't you speak?"

He was smiling faintly. The lips which had been petulant in boyhood had taken on firmer, straighter lines that refused the indignity of easy rage. "I'd not change a day of my life for that of any other man," he said cheerfully.

She was a little suspicious of his meaning, but she had to take it at its best. She rose and put a hand on his arm.

"Out of my way, Alexander, if you want breakfast. Why did you get up so early on a Saturday?"

"Ask the sun."

"Shall I give you a dark curtain?"

"No; I'll go without sleep rather than have my window blinded. What would I do when I waked in the night if I couldn't see my hills?"

"Sleep again the sooner, perhaps. No wonder I can't make my candles last. Alec, you're not to touch a book to-day."

"Come for a walk with me, then."

"Get Janet."

"No, she can't walk like you. Come."

"I mustn't." His flattery loosened her tongue. "He wouldn't like it. Go and get dressed, my son. I'll have your porridge heated in ten minutes."

So after breakfast he set off alone, with a packet of sandwiches in one pocket and the forbidden book in the other. He followed the little track amidst the bracken, and, having mounted, looked down on the watered valley and across it at the opposing hills, and his love and need of the place leaped in him like a thing alive, and mingled with the steady happiness of doing his chosen work.

He remembered the summer evening of the year before, when he had come home from Oxford for the last time. He returned, having done the thing he meant to do, and his degree was not a disappointment even to himself, but neither was it a surprise; and if it was possible to have a deeper satisfaction than that of holding the thing for which he had reached out, it was in the sure knowledge of the use to which that thing must be put. An earlier generation might have made a preacher of him, his own pointed to the school and not the church. He believed he had been born to teach; he found his most potent temptation in his lust for giving knowledge, and though not the least worthy of desires, it was none the less a self-indulgence. But its gratification was not always pleasant, and after suffering some of the sharp pangs that youth knows how to inflict on youth, he learnt to hold his tongue among his peers. He had that cruel lesson in his first year, and for the other three he contented himself with listening. The power of observation taught by loneliness was turned on the men who seemed so light-heartedly young to him. He liked them, he had a kind of envy of them, and watched the gambols of their minds and bodies with the melancholy pleasure of an old sheep looking on the lambs of spring. He had the good sense not to try imitation, but he spent on them the study which he was incapable of withholding from anything that fronted him, and if he saw little of women during those years, he had, at the end of them, as good an understanding of men as his youth could compass, and one that steadied his belief that there was no higher calling than the one he meant to follow. The contest in his mind, as he walked homeward that night, a year ago, had been between ambition and a duty whose existence he did not disclaim. Here was his mother and her need of a sane being in her house, and beyond there was a large world with a place in it for his ability. With all the garnered control of his strength he wanted to find that place and fill it, yet it seemed the gods willed otherwise, for in his pocket there lay a letter offering him a mastership at his old Grammar School, and it was pressing against his side with the urgency of a command, pricking him with a pointed question. Was it the personal ambition or the impersonal ideal on which his eyes were set? It was easy to entangle the two so that the answer fitted with his will, and he walked bewildered. He found there were many sides to duty, that inclination is not perforce opposed to it, and he was still struggling for clearness when he turned the corner of the road and saw the hills. Their calm mocked his restlessness, and their splendour made a little thing of him. He stood and fed on them.

Against the tender colour of the sky they held the darkness of the coming night, and soon their arms would open to let forth a dusky coverlet for the world. Proud of that burden, they lifted serene heads above it and waited for the stars, and after them the day, and then the night once more, and all the buffetings that time, and wind and rain might bring them. Their beauty and strength and patience were holy to Alexander, and at the sight of them he was ready for any sacrifice of his ambition, while his mind was confused with longing to express his gratitude and praise. This was more than the appeal of the ├Žsthetic: through nature he was half consciously trying to find God, and his troubles left him and went like winged things to the heights.

He walked on: he had a conviction that his way would be made clear. This was strange to a mind that only came to its conclusions after fierce wrestling; but he did not question it, and, rejoicing in this new submission and in the clang of his boots on the hard road, he marched on until the hills drew more closely round him and the lake narrowed to receive its feeding streams. Green rushes grew in the shallows and were stirred by the water's gentle surge, and among them, unseen, Alexander thought the reedy pipe was played. The music woke such echoes in his heart that his stern self-control tried to refuse it hearing; but the hour was victor and the hills were its allies. In the perfection of impulse they swept upwards from the valley, and it was amazing that the dark and stunted yews round the little church, the scattered houses and the grazing cattle should have been allowed to keep the places men had given them, for the curves of the mountain's mysterious sides had the fatality of a wave. But they had the placidity of their own strength: themselves the victims of Nature's ruthlessness, they had learnt ruthlessness from her, yet remained benign, and in the face of their serenity the man was willing to distrust the efforts of his own mind. But only for this moment was he the yielding child of these numerous and mighty parents, ready to let his future be what they decreed: and only because he was aware of his waiting will, did he find this happiness in obedience to the evening and the hills.

With the fluty song beguiling him, he left the road and walked by the banks of the Broad Beck, until his bathing pool shone out among the birches. He saw himself mirrored dimly in the water, and the blurred image appeared to him as the true presentment of the thing he was, vague and incomplete, the rough shape his soul must perfect. The trees, in their drooping, veiled the fading light and curtained Alexander from the rest of the world, but he felt the Blue Hill behind him and fancied he could hear its breathing.

He had meant to take the bath that was always like a new baptism into the life of the hills, but the shadowy form prayed him not to shatter it, and the hanging stillness of the wood forbade disturbance, so he shouldered the knapsack he had laid aside, and treading softly, struck across the fields for home.

He found Janet sitting on the horse-block.

"You're here!" she said. "What way did you come?"

"By the beck. The water drew me."

"And I've been listening for the sound of your feet on the road. More than an hour I've been here."

"Where's my mother?"

"Over the hills, somewhere, after that man of hers. He's like a bad child: runs for the pleasure he gets in seeing her follow, I believe."

"Was he drunk?" he asked, and looking round, he saw a tragedy in every shadow.

"He'd been drinking. She sent for me."

His look sharpened. "For the first time?"

"The third," she owned.

"It's like that?"

"You see, there've been long years of it."

"I know! Do I not know!"

"He slept till morning, but when the light came he went, and she after him. It's oftenest at night he goes, and then she cannot always follow. It's bad, Alexander. You'll not be leaving her again? Or will you?"

He crossed the rutted lane and leaned on the wall. Here was the solving of his problem ready to his hand as he had foretold, but now he was rebellious. He stared across the field to where the birches stood about his pool, and he saw the brilliance of his future sadden and fade as though a star had drowned itself there, in the water among the trees. He made a movement as if to follow and bring it back, yet he stayed by the wall: his hands gripped the stones, but his heart had gone after the glowing treasure, lost and sunken, and as yet he had no wish to kindle the little rushlight of his faith, blown out by his own gasping breath.

He faced the blackness and turned to Janet. "I'm staying," he said. He had made his decision, but, as though he looked at himself from afar off, he saw all the pitiful struggling of his youth and felt its loneliness, and his mind swung forward to the years when he should have ceased to suffer from the unbearable throb of his own being. And though he was no easy smiler, his mouth widened. Life and his conception of it were things too mysterious for anger, or sorrow, or speculation, and for an instant he was glad to think himself splendidly delivered from free will. But that thought passed swiftly, and he became proud in the possession of those qualities that make life difficult.

"Janet," he said, and the smile lingered, "you've played me false. Here I've been thinking you'd save us from the toils; I've been thinking you were a witch, and I find you're nothing but a common woman after all!"

She had no merriment to give back.

"I've been delivered out of temptation, so far," she said, "but I may fall yet. How often do you think I've said the Lord's Prayer when I've known that poor soul was bleating all over the mountains like a lost sheep, and your mother after him with the lantern in her hand? 'Deliver us from temptation, deliver me from temptation,' I've said over and over, to keep back the thoughts. I could say charms over him. I brought him to my door once--only once--when I knew the drink was crying out in him; but not again. It wasn't a face that I was meant to see, the one he showed me that night, so now I say my prayers. I'll do no more, Alexander."

He drew near. "Ah, but if I wanted you to, Janet? If I needed help?"

"Ah, then." She brushed a hand across her face. "Pray that the day won't come," she said.