CHAPTER XV

He remembered how he took Janet home through the soft darkness, and returned to find his father and mother in the kitchen. She was kneeling at her husband's feet, and though she turned and smiled, she did not speak. The light of the single candle showed her white face patched with shadow; her clothes were disordered, her hair fell in wisps on each side of her face.

"This is a fine welcome," Alexander said. He pushed her aside, and pulled off the heavy, sodden boots.

"So you're back," said James Rutherford.

Alexander made no answer. With his hands in his pockets he stood and looked at the smouldering fire. Clara lighted the lamp. "It looks so cheerless," she complained. Her fingers moved stiffly: she wasted several matches. "Would you like anything to eat, Jim?"

"No, I'm sleepy. I'll go to bed." His eyes looked glazed. He lifted himself from his chair and laid an awkward hand on Alexander's shoulder. "I'm glad you're back," he said, and passed out. Alexander did not move until the creaking of the stairs had ceased, and his mother spoke.

"Alec, you didn't say good-night--or anything."

"If I'd said what I was thinking----" The red light in his eyes flickered as he saw how she drooped against the table. "Why are you not sitting down? Come here. How many miles have you tramped to-day? Let me have your boots. Why will you do it? Why will you do it?" He chafed her stockinged feet.

She leant forward to touch his face. "Alec, I'm sorry we weren't here when you came home. My heart was here."

"No, no!"

"Part of it, then."

"As much as that? I was thinking you'd be in the porch, with the light from the kitchen creeping round the passage corner; and there was Janet on the horse-block, like a great black bird. Couldn't you have let him run by himself for this one day?"

"I daren't." She shivered.

"If you did it once he'd stop."

"No, it's like a disease. It's inherited, Alexander."

"Ay, that's his excuse. It gives him the kind of pleasure a child gets when it's ill." He thought it was the first time he had heard her sigh.

"You'll have to be patient with us, Alec. And could you stir the fire up a bit? I'm cold, my son."

"Are you? Ah, you're killing yourself!" He felt her hands. They were of a clinging cold that frightened him. "I'll have a blaze in a minute," he said; but as he would have risen he felt her limp arms round his neck and her cheek against his.

"Such miles, and miles, and miles," she sobbed; "such miles and miles! And to have you angry at the end of it! You mustn't be angry, Alec."

"I'm not; I'm not."

"You must help me."

"I want to." His own voice was as strange in his ears as her appeal. "I shan't leave you again. I'm going to stay with you."

She started back from him and sat straight in the chair.

"No! How can you? I'll have no idle son." She wiped her eyes and smoothed back her hair. "Let me see to the fire," she said briskly. "What do you mean, Alexander?"

"When did you eat last?"

"I don't know. I won't have you doing things out of pity. I don't need pity, or you, or anyone. I was tired to-night; and yes, perhaps I do need some food. Alec, you're not going to live here, buried."

"Will you have your milk hot or cold?" he said. "And here's a rice-pudding."

"You've never known me behave like that before. I'm getting old, but, still, I'm strong--very strong."

"Or would you rather have some meat? The pudding will be better at this time of night."

"You must forget it, Alexander. It seems as if I was complaining--unhappy. There's no woman happier than I am--and have always been. Remember that. But the sight of you, and being tired, and cold, and hungry----"

"I won't listen till you've had your supper," he said, and filled a pipe.

She ate quickly under the whip of her thoughts.

"If anyone but you had seen me just now----"

"But no one did. And I've forgotten it, very nearly." He raised that droll left eyebrow, and she smiled at him.

"A night's rest is a very good thing for a memory that's too thorough," she said.

"I expect to find it so."

"Then, Alexander, what did you mean by saying that? It's not fair to take advantage of a woman's crying, and the only time you've ever seen her do it--or shall."

"I shall remember again if you're not careful. I'd decided before I saw you. Read that."

She read, and handed back the letter. "You'd never dream of it," she said.

"Why not?" Her indignation was the mirror that reflected his own late despair, seen now as a small and foolish thing; and as he gathered the thoughts which were to silence his mother's protests, the ideal came floating back to him, with pinions spread, so near and beautiful that he almost touched it.

"You with your degree! You could go anywhere."

"I don't know. I'm not a social success. I've lived these four years in fear of being called one of Nature's gentlemen."

"Alexander, I'm not a worldly woman, but to go to that little place would be wasting you. Why, you're brilliant! And anybody would do to teach those lumps of boys. I could do it myself."

"I was one of them once. Oh, Mother!" he stood up and let out the passion of his past restraint and the hopes he wanted to keep uppermost. "Oh, Mother, does it matter whom I teach? It's not the learning I'll get into their thick heads--there'll be little enough of that; it's the men I want to make of them, whether they belong to the tinkers, and tailors, and the rest, or to the cabinet ministers! Do you think that God has different values for different folks?"

"Well, I'm not in His counsels, but from the way He makes some of them, you'd think He had a grudge against them. But you were made whole, Alexander, and you've got to do something great with yourself."

"And isn't it a grand thing to think you're going to fashion men?"

"I'm sure you'll enjoy the feeling," she said drily; "but I doubt if you'll do much." She saw the familiar tightening of his lips.

"I'm going to try, anyway," he said.

"Your father won't be pleased."

"That's the last thing I'd expect."

"It's a waste. What did you go to Oxford for? It's a waste of time, and money, and talent."

"It shan't be, Mother."

"Well, I suppose you'll please yourself; but I won't have you thinking you've done this for my sake."

"I'm doing it for its own," he said, and spoke the truth, for in opposing his design, Clara had shown him all its beauty.

A year later, as he strode upward amid high-growing bracken, on that Saturday in June, he saw the same beauty, and it was undimmed, untarnished by labour and disappointment. The joy of knowing had been Alexander's all his life, and he had suffered sincerely at the discovery that most boys were dull to its delight, and spent their energies in escaping it. He had lived through some haggard months in trying to lure them with careful morsels, but he had ended by administering learning like medicine and under no disguise. But if here he felt himself cheated, there still lived and grew in him the early belief that in all he did and was he would be helping to fashion men, and, as he stood to give a lesson, he knew that the character of Alexander Rutherford was of more importance to these indifferent listeners than the words of Virgil. There was a cause for humility, and an inspiration, and if, in that first year, Alexander watched his soul and his thoughts overmuch, it was but the fault of his earnestness and his youth, and, outside his work, he was not given to self-analysis, that frequent offspring of self-pity. He was not sorry for himself: the brooding time of his boyhood was past, and now, even when anxiety had its claws in him, and he hurried home from school in fear of what he should find, he was conscious of an underflow of happiness as ceaseless as the streams he loved, whose voices were always with him as he followed the track his own feet had made. The sound came in changing volume through the curtain of the mist as though, behind that grey wrapping, doors were opened and then shut. On these days of dripping quiet, the water cried, but there were others when it chuckled between its babbling sentences, or roared in its fury to reach the sea.

The thin figure of trouble might walk with Alexander and lie beside him when he slept, but it could not rob him of content. Roused in the night by the opening of a door and stealthy feet on the stairs, he would pull on his clothes and follow his father into the darkness, and hardly regret his bed when the freshness of falling rain met his cheek, or the night smell of flowers assailed him; or, when he waited in the kitchen while the coals slipped in the fireplace and lost their red, and he strained his ears for a voice or a footstep, they were comforted by the singing of the larches. At those times, when he could not read, he made a comrade of Theresa, who looked down from the mantelpiece. A new picture of her stood there, with her hair upturned, and a smile that had no tiresome permanence: it came and went, he thought, according to her mood or his, and always the eyes looked at him with friendship. He would nod to her as he filled his pipe, and be glad of her companionship. He spoke to her sometimes, but his thoughts never went to Radstowe and made her solid. That would have been to spoil his vague conception of a girl who gave all he wanted and asked for nothing, who was there when he desired her and absent when he chose, who was no more and no less real than he would have her be; and when Edward Webb wrote of his Theresa, it was of another than this pictured girl that Alexander thought: it was of the spoiled child of a fond father, fixed by him in a false pose of genius, and unrelated to the sexless being who looked and smiled at him on lonely nights, and was as fine, and free, and formless as the wind.

Alexander walked far that day, and came back with the stars. His steps were loud on the stony path, and through the soft and palpable darkness he heard the stirring of the creatures in the henhouse and the dog's welcoming bark.

There was peace in the kitchen. His father and mother sat close together before the small wood fire, and the lamp, lighting the book from which he read to her, strengthened the colour of her hair. The murmuring voice stopped as Alexander entered, and the book was closed. He felt intrusive, out of season, like one who has come upon lovers unawares.

"There's a letter for you," said Clara, and rose to put food on the table. "Is it from Edward Webb?"

"Yes."

It was not the usual bulky package: the envelope held no verse for Alexander's criticism, but a thin sheet of paper, hardly covered. He read the letter, walked into the yard, and back again.

"His wife's dead," he said.

"Oh, Alexander! Oh, poor soul!" Clara stood in the middle of the room, seeing the desolation of that man without a mate. "What will he do?" She set the plates down gently. "There'll be nobody to take care of him," she said.

"We could ask him to come here."

"We could."

"I'll write to him."

"There's no post till Monday."

"Time enough."

"Let him be, let him be!" Rutherford said. "He's a poor little stick of a man, and he's here too often. Why can I never have the house to myself?"

"It's a long time since he has been here, Jim." She had one of his hands in hers. "Ask him, Alexander. And tell him to bring that girl of his, if he will."

"Need we have the girl?"

"He'll be happier with her."

Her glance went to the mantelpiece, and Alexander's followed. He was near crying out, "But that's not the one he'll bring!" and then the thought flashed: "But she must be like that, or how did we ever get her picture?" The reality and the dream jostled each other, merged, and separated with all their outlines blurred. Discomfort was in his breast like a snake in grass.

"I'm against asking the girl," he said firmly.

James Rutherford lifted his head. "And I'm for it. You don't consult me--either of you. Isn't this my house? We'll have the girl; but aren't there two of them? Let's have them both. Two of them, aren't there, Clara? Well, then, Alexander--both." He stood before the fire and stroked his beard.

"They shall be asked. There is also an uncle."

"Oh, never mind him! Three's enough."

Alexander went away laughing, but he was uneasy until he had the letter in which Edward Webb accepted the invitation for himself, and refused it for both his daughters.