LM

“ For every one rose on the bushes now, there were ten then. Sure, I never know which of them I’m for loving best. At times I think ’tis this fair lady, then I’m for thinking ’tis yonder creamy Devonionsis, or that drooping white Niphetos, or Caroline Testout smiling away over there. But for the most I’m always coming back to General Jacqueminot. ’Tis the old-fashionedness of him, and his sturdy ways, and, more than all, the sweet scent of him. If you’re down on your luck, and take a good sniff at him, why, the world’s a different place that very minute. ”

“ How was any living human creature possessed of a drop of warm tingling blood in his veins to encompass such a state of being? He saw the trio as they had come towards him in the August sunshine that morning,—the girl tall, graceful, breathing vitality, temperament; the merest casual observer must have felt her extraordinary capacity for feeling things intensely. Oh, it was no imagination on his part, imagination fed by the white light of idealism with which he had surrounded her. Verily was there no imagination on his part. She would suffer in every fibre of her being. ”

“ That first Saturday afternoon John, sitting on an overturned wheelbarrow, began something of those thoughts of which I have given you the greater elaboration. I don’t believe for a moment that he knew that he was thinking them. There’s the curious joy of such thoughts. There is no conscious effort on your part. You don’t map out a route in your mind resolving your progress along it, a conscientious observance of the milestones you may pass. Insensibly you drift into peaceful glades, silent and very sweet. ”

“ AN OLD PRIEST Father Maloney was in a mood, which, it must be confessed, was distinctly unfavourable to his peace of mind. And not only his peace of mind, but his appetite had suffered considerably thereby. Cold corned beef and plum tart had been so much sawdust between his lips, flavourless and exceeding dry. Even his after-luncheon pipe failed to rouse him to a cheerier outlook on life in general. Now, when the joys of tobacco had ceased to woo him, matters had, indeed, come to a pretty pass. Anastasia, his housekeeper, clearing away the débris of the meal, eyed him solicitously. ”

“ The water broke in baby waves on the shore, with the faintest musical ripple. Sea-gulls dipped to the shining surface, or floated smoothly in the blueness above. Now and again a cormorant flew, black and long-necked across the water.
Some half-hour or so Corin sat there, basking and dreaming in the sun, thinking, you may be pretty certain, of nothing, or at all events with thoughts too diffused to be worthy of the name. ”

“ John was silent. Rosamund leaned upon the balustrade, half-sitting, half-standing.
“You needn’t mind saying what is in your thoughts,” said she. And there was a little whimsical smile in her eyes. “Of course you can’t help thinking about the fact that we are going to lose it all, any more than I can help thinking about it. It makes freedom of speech just a trifle difficult, if all the time you are feeling it is a subject to be carefully avoided. ”

“ Below, in the garden, were golden splotches of colour—beds of great African marigolds, a vivid contrast to the cool green of the close-dipped grass. Through the silence came the musical dripping of a fountain.
Overhead a door opened. She heard a child’s voice, and then a little burst of laughter. Again there was silence. And slowly the rose-colour faded in the sky, till only a pale lavender-grey haze covered land and water.
The gold of the marigolds became softly blurred; the green of the grass lost its colour. ”

“ Father Maloney went off to the Green Man to find David. He saw the scouting propensities he conceived men of his type to possess, standing them in good stead at the moment. Having enlisted his services, and likewise those of Elizabeth, as already seen, he set off once again for the Castle.
The day was as hot as the previous days had been. The earth lay panting and breathless. There was something almost ominous about the brazen blueness of the sky, the extraordinary stillness that hung over the earth. ”

“ It was probably infinitely more poignant to John than to the other members of the luncheon table. That is the worst of being possessed of a sensitive and imaginative temperament. Your suffering is invariably duplex. You suffer for yourself and the other, or others, as the case may be. And, in suffering for others, your imagination, as often as not, passes the bounds of actualities, for the very excellent reason that you possess no real knowledge to bring it to a halt.
Corin, though certainly less imaginative, felt the slight tension. ”

“ The progress of time vanished with the falling plaster. You found yourself back in the old centuries, the dead years revitalized.
John sought the church most willingly when the workmen’s hours were over, when silence lay upon the place, when the only sounds that came to him were the falling of fragments from the walls, the echo of Corin’s foot upon the plank as he shifted his position, and the twittering and chirping of the birds from the bushes in the sunny churchyard without. ”

“ Of course Elizabeth knew perfectly well who he was. That may well go without saying. But, in spite of John having said that he was a decent fellow, he wasn’t in the remotest degree like her mental conception of him.
She had pictured him a big man—which he truly was, also a bluff man, a jovial man, a talker, a bit loud-voiced, perhaps a trifle assertive, at all events very confident of himself, and all these things he was not. It had not taxed Elizabeth’s intuition very vastly to perceive that, contrary to all her expectations, there was an extraordinary diffidence about him. ”

“ THE WICKEDNESS OF MOLLY BIDDULPH You perceive, therefore, that Chance had truly played the game well. John—a radiant John—apologized within his soul for his one-time doubt of the Sprite’s arrangement of affairs. The sun immediately shone brighter, the sky was bluer, the earth an altogether fairer and lovelier place.
He made his way swiftly back to the White Cottage. There, in the parlour, he found what he sought, a pale grey envelope lying on the table. ”

“ Small wonder that John fumed inwardly, the while his eyes gazed after the vanishing three, distilled essence of concentrated longing in their depths.
Chance alone could destroy the barrier,—Chance, the freakish, puckish sprite, who sits with watchful eyes, smiling softly, impishly, till the chosen moment arrives. Then, heigh presto! Chance springs light-footed to your aid, is caught by you laughing, or in deadly earnest, according to your needs. ”

“ To the left the parkland sloped gently upwards to a wood of beeches,—a serene, cool, silent place, a veritable haunt of dryads.
Between the avenue and the wood was a great oak tree, stretching wide branches above the rough grass. Rumour had it that here was the scene of that old-time tragedy. Though unknowing of this rumour, John yet felt something almost sinister about the twisted, gnarled branches, and massive trunk of the great tree. There was a hint of secrecy about it, the dumb knowledge of some tragedy. Almost involuntarily he turned across the grass towards it. ”

“ In face, this same Corin was plump, smooth-skinned, rosy-cheeked, fair-haired, with short-sighted blue eyes that gazed at you kindly from behind gold-rimmed spectacles. His own [Pg 9] appearance caused him moments of acute anguish.
“Look at me!” he would cry on occasions, having met his reflection in some unexpected mirror in a friend’s house or studio, “Look at me! The soul of an artist, and the appearance of a benign and grown-up baby! If I didn’t know my own nature and character, I vow I’d be taken in. I am taken in when I come upon myself in this disgusting and unexpected fashion. ”

“ Corin found the joys of scraping plaster off walls beginning to pall. Apparently he had come to an end of discovery.
It is one thing to delve for new treasures, it is another to scrape for hours on end to find a mere repetition of design. However delightful masonry and herb Robert may be when it dawns freshly on the sight, its continued contemplation waxes somewhat stale. ”

“ Corin snorted. It was not exactly an ill-bred snort, you understand; nevertheless it was one.
“And will you kindly tell me where those officers are to be found?” he questioned loftily. “Look here, man, let’s drop simile for the moment. If you maintain that we human beings are incapable of understanding the plans of the Powers that be, how are we going to shape the course of our actions? We’ve got to work on some scheme, if we don’t drift. Who’s going to interpret that scheme to us, if we don’t interpret it for ourselves?”
“That,” returned David, “is exactly what I’m trying to figure out.” ”

“ A FUNNY WORLD “It’s never a bit of good losing your temper,” remarked Mrs. Trimwell sagely. “You can say much more telling things if you don’t.”
She was clearing the luncheon table. John, from the depths of an armchair, made a sound slightly indicative of doubt.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Trimwell firmly, in reply to the sound, “you can. Losing your temper you never know what you are going to say, and as like as not you’ll say something as’ll hit back on yourself, and you be sorry you said later. Keeping it you can have an eye to your neighbour’s weaknesses, and pull them out to show, so to speak.” ”

“ It’ll be a toss-up on the special species you light on.”
“But,” said David firmly, “there must be truth somewhere.”
“Of course there is,” returned Corin magnificently. “There’s a modicum of truth in every religion. Divest them of their forms and you’ll get vastly nearer the whole truth. I tell you, there’s the Divine in every man. The various churches have set up God as a kind of bogey wherewith to frighten naughty children. God exists, but not separate from us, as the churches teach, a judge to allot punishment or reward to a feeble humanity; He exists in each one of us. ”

“ Rosamund turned towards him, a light of interest in her eyes. “Has he found much?”
“He only started on the job this morning,” returned John. “We arrived last night. But he’s full of confidence. There must be a curious fascination in the work,—delving into the past, bringing traces of bygone, forgotten ages into the light of day.”
“And a certain sadness,” she suggested.
“And a certain sadness,” echoed John, “though I doubt me if Corin experiences it greatly. He’s an anomaly. For all that he’s a poet and a bit of a dreamer, there’s a strain of the scientific dissector running through him. ”

“ Shakespeare never made a truer statement than when he said, ‘There’s nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’ There’s the sum of all religion.”
“Then,” said David dryly, “religion is a mighty elusive thing to tackle. There are some Indians—I forget which brand their religion is—think it right to treat the poor little widows as scum on the face of the earth, but I don’t fancy any amount of thinking can make it right to treat any woman that way. There’s injustice somewhere if that’s the way to deal with them.”
“It’s karma,” said Corin succinctly. ”

“ Do you suppose that any one who didn’t know about it, would believe it?”
“Not an atom,” John assured her promptly. “If any one, I for instance, were to write a novel dealing with it, I’ll be bound I’d be considered to have strained the long arm of coincidence to breaking point. That’s the queer thing about truth. It’s always a thousand times, a million times, queerer than fiction.” ”

“ He didn’t know the man at all. He didn’t even recognize his speech. It is small wonder that he was bewildered; it is small wonder that he spent solitary hours in a futile attempt to reconstruct his preconceived notions of the man.
I believe that the moment when David got a first blurred glimpse of this stranger, was in Father Maloney’s odd little parlour. He had had another glimpse of him at the Castle; and since then, little by little, the glimpses had resolved themselves into full vision. And through it all, with it all, was a queer sense of vibratory forces at work. ”

“ You’ve an idea that the possession may hinder you in your quest. You must grant the quest real. I know it is. Now, I can’t see the smallest reason why it should prevent you actually finding what you seek. It couldn’t. But I fancy,” went on Elizabeth thoughtfully, “that there may be two reasons for that idea of yours. The first, and most obvious, seems that there is probably a bigger moral obligation to give up the possession than appears on the surface of things, in fact that the possession isn’t yours, and that this queer idea is a sort of inner voice telling you so. ”

“ At least, not if she’s the woman I take her to be. And she must be that woman, or I don’t for a moment believe you would love her. Oh, John, dear, don’t you understand that women, the right kind of women, don’t want the external things a man can give? They want him himself, and the things that are part of him, the things without which he wouldn’t be himself at all. I mean love, loyalty, friendship. I don’t believe the majority of people have a notion how important the last is. That is why there are so few ideal marriages.”
“Hum!” mused John.
“It’s true,” said Elizabeth. ”

“ Now, he also perceived, or thought he perceived, that while David was aware of the incongruity of the situation, he had not fully recognized it to lie, as John saw it to lie, in this same mental atmosphere. This fact in itself increased the man’s loneliness. He was not only isolated in mind from those with whom he found himself, but he was isolated from himself, because he did not understand himself. It is the most bewildering kind of loneliness. ”