Violet Jacob

“ Both men had business in Crishowell, and as Rhys Walters was now well enough to be left alone for a few hours, Williams had no scruple in turning the key on his charge and starting with his patron for the valley.
The hoar-frost hung on everything. Around them, the heavy air enwrapped the landscape, making an opaque background to the branches and twigs which stood as though cut out in white coral against grey-painted canvas. Bumpett felt the cold a good deal and pressed forward almost at a trot, looking all the more grotesque for the company of the big, quiet man beside him. ”

“ The air grew more chilly as they got higher up and the road more slippery; Rhys leaned forward, encouraging the mare as she laboured valiantly up the heart-breaking slope. The banks flew by, gates, stiles; soon they were passing the ruined cottage that stood not a hundred yards from the egress to the mountain; he could see the bare boughs of the apple-trees that tapped against the battered window-panes.
Suddenly the mare lurched, scraping the earth with her feet, and the moon seemed to sway in the sky and to be coming down to meet the hedge. ”

“ He felt as if the confession of his past doings would have taken pounds from that weight of shame which he had carried about with him ever since his acceptance of Bumpett’s terms. His only comfort was in the fact that his mother had never suspected the life to which he had pledged himself for her sake. He had not known the sympathy of a woman since her death.
He looked down at the earth on his boots as he spoke, for he had forgotten, when he came in, to clean them on the heap of bracken by the doorstep. He was afraid that Mrs. Walters was looking at it too. ”

“ The evenings had been damp and chilly of late, with not a breath of wind stirring to lift the fog which hung over the Black Mountain and pressed like a heavy, dead hand right into Crishowell village.
On the green track which led along the plateau at the foot of the Twmpa the air to-night lay still and thick. Noises made by the animal world were carried a long distance by the moist atmosphere, and sounds were audible to people who had learned to keep their ears open for which they might have listened in vain at ordinary times. ”

“ One cannot do two things at once. He looked round in desperation and saw Howlie’s rabbit face at his side.
“Tear it open!” he cried. “Tear it open!”
A fresh burst of flame was blowing in his eyes.
The boy he had rescued was on his feet, but the fire had caught his shirt and he was trying to break away in the madness of his terror.
By this time Mr. Fenton had come close to the stage; he pulled off the thick coat he wore and tossed it up to Llewellyn. The young man smothered the child in its close folds, throwing him down and rolling him over as though he were fighting with a wild beast. ”

“ The two little hands beating against the wall, the hard, stupid face of the woman, the cheerless room, all were too horrible to a man of his disposition to be gone through with any longer. He could do nothing for Mary if he stayed, though he could not help feeling cowardly at leaving her to face the first moments of her grief with such a companion. A flutter of icy wind came through a broken pane near him, and his horse out in the road stamped once or twice; his mind ran towards the inn at Llangarth, and he thought of the bright, warm light in the bar. ”

“ Not that it was pity or concern that moved him—he cared little enough for anything that affected the man before him—but even he, coarse, sordid, callous as he was, could feel that Rhys Walters had gone beyond the reach of fear or hope, joy or malice, and that the grey waters of despair divided him from the power of aught else but some one influence which was working within him. Nothing could help or harm him any more. The soul that looked out of his sunken eyes was one pertaining no longer to the ordinary world of human beings with its hates and loves, its ambitions and griefs ”

“ He leaned against the end of the cottage with a sore heart. In his eternal quarrel with life he never failed to get the worst of it, and, though he had not the morbid temperament which broods over these things, the grim undercurrent of dislike to his surroundings was always there. He ground his teeth as he thought of Rhys Walters, of Bumpett and his hateful trade, of his ill success with Mary and the rebuke he had felt so much, of the vile round of law-breaking to which he was bound for yet another year ”

“ In a small place like Crishowell it is scant news that can remain hidden; what is known to one is the property of the whole community, and Mary’s history was soon in every mouth. Horror and mystery were sweet to the rural taste, which was beginning to feel dulled after such a surfeit of events as the riot, the arrests, Vaughan’s death, and Rhys’ disappearance. The tale of her double wrong gave it something to think about again, and the talk reached the ears of George Williams at last, though he mixed rarely with his fellow-men, and consequently knew little of the topics of the village. ”

“ Of large hates and loves and hopes, abstract principles, of the only things to be dignified by the name of real life, she had no idea. Natures like hers are more safely guarded from the greater temptations than are the salt of the earth, for these may fall and rise again higher, but, for such as Isoline, there is neither rising nor falling.
It was seldom that her life had presented such a difficulty to her as it did now. She was certain that Harry would make a determined effort to see her, and she would give a great deal to be spared the ordeal. ”

“ Isoline sat looking out of the corners of her grey eyes at Lady Harriet, and taking in every detail of her appearance; she had never seen any one in the least like her, and she was almost shocked by her simplicity of manner and generally untitled appearance; this simplicity made her feel more shy than the stiffness she had anticipated. She could not talk to Harry with much ease in the presence of his parents, and they were so much engrossed in her uncle that she had a good opportunity of examining her surroundings. The drawing-room interested her very much. ”

“ Mr. Fenton and Llewellyn laughed, but the audience, which had little sense of incongruity, was as serious as ever. The Dragon, pleased to his inmost parts by his success, blew out another shower. One red spark settled on the straw, then another, and another. There was a crackle, an exclamation; the pony turned and jumped off the low platform into the middle of the people, depositing its rider at their feet, and the terrible scream of childish agony rose from the two poor little prisoners in their shroud of living flame. ”

“ As he had been to Crishowell church once or twice, he knew Mr. Lewis perfectly by sight, and the irony of things made him smile as he realized that, in his own former respectable personality of Mr. Walters of Great Masterhouse, he could never have hoped to speak to the Vicar’s lovely niece. He was a farmer, he reflected, she a lady, not knowing that no circumstances in this world could have made Isoline Ridgeway a gentlewoman. It pleased him to find that, as he had slipped from his original and obvious surroundings, she had evidently taken him for a man of her own class. ”

“ She stood beside it looking round at the darkening landscape, never suspecting that, apart from the Pig-driver and a few of his dependents, she was almost the only person in Crishowell parish who would venture to do so. Had she known it, the idea would hardly have troubled her, for though not physically brave, she was too unimaginative to be upset by anything she could neither see nor feel. She stepped up on to the bank in which it was embedded, and looked through the straggling hazels for some sign of Rhys. Not a live thing was to be seen. ”

“ Since he had been able to think at all, Rhys had dimly felt this, for it is a frame of mind of whose existence in a woman no masculine human being is ever quite unconscious. When he had grown old enough to understand it, it had given him a violent push in the opposite direction, and set his adolescent brain in a flame.
It was so dark when he reached the Pedlar’s Stone that he had to grope about among the bushes to find it, and he traced his way from it with difficulty to the rock on which he and Isoline had sat. ”

“ A great buzzing fly went past with a hum of wings; but for that the whole world was still; everything was radiating life, and only the yew-tree in the churchyard beneath her laid a dark spot on the uninterrupted flow of light. A man on horseback was turning away from her uncle’s door. He must have come up from the road by a footpath, for she had not seen him arrive. Her heart jumped, for it was Harry—Harry riding away, having evidently been told that Mr. Lewis was out. ”

“ As the new-comer was caught sight of by the huddled-up pack, a loud laugh burst from all and made the empty lane ring.
“Be quiet,” cried Rhys angrily, under his breath. “You fools! can’t you keep from waking the whole place with your noise? Good God! what sort of a tom-fool have we here?”
Before the astonished young man stood a travesty of himself, dress, dark cloak, sun-bonnet, and all, the only additions being a mask and a white woollen comforter, one end of which hung down over a substantial back. ”

“ George was conscious only of the craving to crush his opponent, to break his ribs with the grip of his arms, to fling him like a rag into a corner with the breath wrung out of his body, but Rhys fought for one end alone, to get his man under him upon the floor, and to this object his brain worked equally with his limbs. He had always been jealous of the other’s strength, and he longed and panted to see him lying prostrate below him and to taunt him with his overthrow. ”

“ HEREFORD town is one of those slumbrous cities, guiltless of any bait with which to lure the sight-seer, but possessing both a cathedral and an individuality of its own. It is a town which seems to have acquired no suburbs, to have grown up in its proper area out of the flat fields which lie around. But on the night of which I am speaking an unwonted stir was going on, a rumbling of vehicles through streets usually silent, and a great noise of voices and hoofs in the different inn yards. ”

“ IT was on one of those days which seem to occur only in our youth, that Isoline Ridgeway sat under a cherry-tree on the slope of the field overlooking Crishowell Vicarage. The little puffs of wind which occasionally lifted stray bits of her hair were scented with the scent of may hedges; the whole world seemed to have broken out into white blossom. ”

“ His very face had altered since the days before the Rebecca riots, for the clear tan of his skin was changed to a sort of pallor due to his indoor life. His roamings in the dusk and during the dark hours of night kept him in health, and his limbs had long ago recovered their strength, but he no longer wore the expression of self-centred carelessness which had characterized him a few months before. His keen eyes had a look of pre-occupation, the look of a man whose soul inhabits one place while his body lives in another. ”

“ But it was not to be supposed that the excitement of these meetings could be compared to the legitimate and settled glory of a visit to Waterchurch Court. Isoline had no love of adventure for adventure’s sake, and the prospect of being able to show herself to Harry and Harry’s relations in her prettiest frocks entirely drove from her head the semi-sentimental interest she was beginning to feel for Rhys. ”

“ Turnbull never rode if he could help it.
As he reached the gap he left off pulling at his sun-bonnet, for he needed both hands with which to hold on to the reins. The horse cocked his ears, blew a long, snorting breath, and seemed anxious to test with his nose the nature of the difficulty he was asked to meet. Seeing the little ditch which divided the hedge from the road, he stuck out his forelegs stiffly in front of him, and snorted yet louder; he was a large, gross horse, with bunches of hair on his fetlocks, and his voice tallied with his appearance. ”

“ As daybreak began to grow, he lifted his head, and, throwing out his arms towards the coming light, he took one step forward.
And so, in the dawning, passed the soul of Rhys Walters, beyond the judgment or the mercy of man, into the unfaltering hand of the Eternal Justice. In this sorry world it is one who can get justice for the hundreds who get mercy—the mercy which, we are told, “blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” ”

“ Rhys now cared neither how he existed nor what he did so long as he could see Isoline Ridgeway, and time, for him, was measured merely by the interval between one meeting and another. He snatched at Bumpett’s proposal, which would open the road to all he lived for and give him an occupation he liked. He had grown perfectly reckless, looking no farther than the actual present; his old identity, his old interests and possessions were lost, and no new life, however prosperous, could make up to him for a final parting with Isoline. ”

“ It does not matter for me, but your uncle will hold to it as long as my father does. Oh, darling! I hate this miserable waiting. Who knows what may happen in a year?”
“That is all true, Harry. Oh! what can I do?” she cried. “It is so difficult! If I only had a little time!”
“Take till to-morrow, Isoline.”
“To-morrow? And how can I see you to-morrow?”
“You must send to me.”
She laughed shortly.
“What messenger have I? Howlie is always busy. Besides, he might do something dreadful.”
“Well, I must think of some other way,” said he, “and you must think too, Isoline. ”

“ The Digedi brook was as unlike the flag-bordered trout-stream of the midlands as one piece of water can be to another, for it rose far up in the Black Mountain near the pass by which Walters hoped to reach Abergavenny, and, after a rapid descent to the valley, passed the village, circling wantonly through the pastures to cross Crishowell Lane under a bridge. There was hardly a yard in its career at which its loud voice was not audible, for the bed was solid rock, and the little falls, scarce a foot high, by which it descended to the lower levels, called ceaselessly among the stones. ”