Senhouse

“ Senhouse admitted it, but he said, “You know that the splendour is enacting behind. You guess the opening of the rose. One stalks this earth agog for miracles. It is full of hints—you catch a moment—for flashed instants you are God. Then the mist wraps you, and you blunder forward, two-legged man swaying for a balance. Translate the oracle as you will—with your paint-pans, with your words—we get broken lights, half-phrases. But we guess the rest, and so we strain and grow. ”

“ They said no more at that time, but all day Glyde followed Senhouse about like a dog.
In the evening of what to the undrilled youth was a hard-spent day, Senhouse unfolded his heart and talked long and eloquently of love and other mysteries of our immortal life.
“The attainment of our desires,” he said, “appears to every one of us to be a Law of Nature, and so, no doubt, it is. But that is equally valid which says, 'To every man that which he is fit to enjoy.' The task of men is to reconcile the two. ”

“ Each stood foursquare in the faith of his friend; the independence of each was the pride of the other. So far was she from loving Mr. Senhouse that she learned without a pang of his visit to the Cantacutes in the following summer, of his painting days with Hertha de Speyne, and was surprised at herself. It drew the two girls closer together; it gave zest to letter-writing, and brought Miss Hertha more than once to Southover. Senhouse was the presiding genius of their fireside talks; between Hertha and Senhouse Mary began to find herself—a person, with a reasonable soul in human flesh. ”

“ Senhouse gave him time, quietly eating his own supper, watching the red gleam die down in the poor wretch's eyes. Being himself a spare feeder, he was soon done, and at further business of hospitality. He set a great pipkin of water to heat, brought out a clean robe of white wool, a jelab like his own, and made some tea.
The stranger, then, being filled, cleansed and in warm raiment, stretched himself before the fire, and broke silence. He was still surly, but the grudge was not audible in his voice. “I took your fire for a gypsy camp, and was glad enough of it. ”

“ That young man with the look of a faun, at once sleepy and arch, the habit of a philosopher and the taste for gardening at large, whom we have seen very much at his ease in society quite various, was by name Senhouse—patronym, Senhouse, in the faith John, to the world of his familiars Jack Senhouse, and to many Mad Jack. ”

“ She awoke late from a night of deep sleep to hear it thudding on roof and balcony and to see, when she looked out, the heavy trees of Berkeley-square streaming like waterweed under a sluice. Here and there a cruising hansom thrashed a way through, now and again a milk-cart. The butcher-boys wore their baskets on their heads. Her first conscious thought was of Senhouse, bare-crested to the wild weather. It would be wild in the open, and, of course, he was in the open. On some wide common, perhaps, facing the gale, with the rolling collar of his jersey flacking like ship’s cordage. ”

“ Great ones of time, a Caesar or so, a Catherine, a Buonaparte, come handily to mind, who, wreaking countless woes, wrought evenly their own. And since greatness is a relative term, and time an abstraction of the mind, in their company, says Mr. Senhouse, was Sanchia Percival, and in her blue-clouded eyes was to be discerned seated, like a captain, foreknowledge of her own fate, and will to choose it. ”

“ Senhouse sings, a Goddess in her own Right. That is to be observed, or we fail. Persons have existed, and do yet exist, who are law unto themselves, deliberate choosers of their fate, deliberate allies of Atropos with the shears, who go what seems to us, shivering on the brink of things, a bright and bloodstained way, and furrow deeply into life, because it must be so, because so they will have it. ”

“ Senhouse gave him pitiful eyes. “If you think yourself a rat, you are in the way to be more. Come, we will be friends yet. You're near the end of your tether, I think. Let me tuck you into a blanket.”
III
In the morning Glyde, in a humble mood, drank quantities of small beer. In other words, he told his story of Sanchia, of Ingram, and of Mrs. Wilmot. He was so steered by questions from Senhouse that he came, towards the end, to see that if any one had driven his mistress into a life of bondage to Ingram it was himself and his presumptuous arm. ”

“ By the time the coffee was made, and the porridge, and Mary had emerged from the tent, washed and brushed and sparkling, she bethought her of the boy. “I’ll fetch him,” she told Senhouse. “He must be fed.” Senhouse nodded, so she went back to her gîte of the night. The boy had disappeared, and with him her cloak.
Senhouse chuckled when he heard her faltered tale. “Nature all over—bless her free way,” he said. “She’ll lap you like a mother—and stare you down for a trespasser within the hour. She takes her profit where she finds it, and if she can’t find it will cry herself to sleep. ”

“ But Clyde cried out, “God forbid! Are you prying when you look at the sun! Master, you need not grudge the Pole. He is nothing.”
“I grudge no man anything he can get of her,” said Senhouse. “He will get precisely what lies within his scope.”
“He has the eyes of a rat,” Glyde said. ”

“ Mary said. “Of course I don’t mind the cloak. He wanted it more than I did. But what will become of him—poor little pinched boy?”
Senhouse picked up a bleached leaf of rowan—a gossamer leaf—and showed it to her. “What will become of that, think you? It all goes back again. Nothing is lost.” He threw it up, and watched it drift away on the light morning wind. Then, “Come and have your breakfast,” he bade her. ”

“ She was a girl intensely interested in a hundred dawning things, to whom love had come late. Until she was near twenty you would have thought her sexless. Senhouse, her poetical friend and teacher—her only friend, her only confidant—had dubbed her Artemis; and it may well have been his adoring service of her pure flame which first turned it inwards, to scorch her heart. All that she had learned of this scholar gypsy she poured out as balm over the stricken Ingram, who swallowed it and her together. ”

“ This mysterious, shrouded Sanchia figured in it as the goddess of a shrine—omnipresent, a felt influence, yet never a woman. He spoke her name with a drop of the voice; every act of hers, as he related it, was coloured by sanction to seem the dealing of a divine person with creeping mankind. To Mrs. Germain it was all preposterous; if she had owned the humorous sense it would have been tragically absurd. For what did it amount to, pray, but this, that Jack Senhouse had been in love with a girl who had loved somebody else, had married her choice, and was now repenting it? ”

“ Senhouse told him, “when you know your way about it. When you have the hang of it you need not touch the roads. You smell out the hedgerows, and every borstal leads you out on to the grass. But I'll own that there are thistles. I wear sandals myself. Now,” he continued, ladling out of his pot with a wooden spoon, “here's your porridge, and there are bread and salt; and here water, and here goat's milk. Afterwards you shall have a pipe of tobacco, and some tea. Best begin while all's hot—and while you eat I'll look to your wounds. ”

“ So she told him, Senhouse, her only friend; and he cried aloud in his agony, “God save her,” while his soul was saying, “Beatrice never shrank from hell, nor ever looked back. No more, God be thanked, does Sanchia.” When the thing was done, and she had gone with unbowed head into the deeps, he had known his hours of desolation; but from that hour she had stood for him “a thing enskied and sainted.” He felt that he was set apart for her worship, and only regretted that Beatrice had had a better poet for the business than Sanchia could ever hope for. ”

“ Senhouse? Oh, yes, I knew him. Used to see him about.” Duplessis resumed his letters; one, especially, made him frown—then stare out of the window. He read others but returned to that.
Lord Bramleigh went on. “I want to tell you about this chap Senhouse. Of course, I never knew him at the Varsity—ages before me, he was. Good footer—player—ran with the beagles—ran like the devil; rowed a bit, painted a bit, sang a damned good song: Jack Senhouse. Well, he’s mad. Rich chap—at least, his father was rich—alderman somewhere, I b’lieve—say, Birmingham . . . ”

“ Senhouse answered, “Rats and men alike seek their meat of the earth. And the rats get rat-food, and the men man's food. Despoina's breasts are very large.” He turned to his poem, folded his jelab about his middle, and went out over the downs. Glyde saw him no more that day, nor, indeed, till the next morning, when he found him squatted over a pipkin simmering on the fire. ”

“ Their strength, their contentedness—just to grow, and be strong and well! Nothing more. What else ought we to want? Food—the sun—strength to grow! Isn't that enough?” She was echoing Senhouse here, and felt an added glow to remember it. He had been much in her thoughts since her last exchange with Chevenix. ”

“ Senhouse scorned him.
“You don't know anything about it,” he said. “What are the doings of this silly world, of our makeshift appearances, to the essentials? Antics—filling up time! You speak as if she gave Ingram everything, and lost it. She did, but he never knew it—so never had it. Ingram had what he was fitted to receive. Her impulse, her impulsion were divine. She has lost nothing—and he has gained nothing.”
“If you talk philosophy I'm done,” cried Mr. Chevenix. “Well, I say to you, my boy, Go and see her. She's so far human that she's got a tongue, and likes to wag it, I suppose. ”

“ She was looking now at her hands in her lap, twisting her fingers about, suddenly bashful.
“But I think,” Senhouse went on, in a level voice, “I think you had better go back and face him.”
She started, she looked at him full of alarm. “Oh, don’t tell me to do that—I implore you. Let me stay here a little while, until I’m stronger.” He smiled, but shook his head.
“No, no. Too unconventional altogether. Really I mean what I say. If you are to be free you must fight yourself free. There’s no other way. Fight Germain, if it is worth your while; but fight Duplessis at all events. That is essential. ”

“ You love a woman, and give her to another man? You love her, and secure her in slavery? You love her, and don't want her?”
“It is I that am the fool, not you,” said Senhouse. “I do want her. I want nothing else in earth or heaven. And yet I know that I have her for ever. Our souls have touched each other. ”

“ This was Senhouse practical. She blushed her answer.
“What will you do? I mustn't turn you out.” He opened his arms wide to the airs of the down.
“I sleep in the open. The stars for me. They shall see you wedded. Meanwhile, I shall wait upon you. But do let us be practical. We wait a week; we marry; but then what shall we do? Shall we reform the world? I think we shall do that in spite of ourselves; for if two people dare to be simple, there's no reason why two million shouldn't.” She lay at peace considering ”

“ Chevenix peered at her. “Thought I should fetch you, my dear. The poet Senhouse is run to ground, and I'm going to see him. That's all.”
It was plain to Morosine that she was very much concerned with this intelligence. She simply sat there, staring at Chevenix, shaking, moving her white lips. She was as white as chalk and her eyes burned black in her face. What on earth—who on earth—? He couldn't for the life of him make it out. He had never heard of the man. It was a shock to him to discover—so soon we flatter ourselves—that Sanchia had any reserve of confidence. ”

“ He is stronger than I, he is very strong. I know, I know very well that he could make me love him if I let him. You have no conception—how could you have? You don’t know what a woman feels when she is—when such a man as that—makes her love him. Despair. But I must not—no, no, I would sooner die. I could never lift up my head again. Slavery.” She shuddered, and shut her eyes; then turned quickly to Senhouse. “Oh, dear friend, I came to you because I was nearly lost one night. I had all but promised. I saw your sign in the road—or thought that I did—just in time, just in the nick of time. ”

“ Senhouse set a watch upon himself. “No doubt she is,” he said. “She's well?”
The other probed him. “She's never made it up with her people. I think she feels it nowadays.”
Senhouse asked sharply, “Where's Ingram?”
“Ingram,” said Chevenix, “is just off for a trip. He's to be abroad for a year. India.”
Senhouse shivered. “Alone?”
“Well, without her, anyhow. He always was a casual beggar, was Nevile.” He could see now that he was making a hit. “Got old Senhouse where he lives,” he told himself, and then continued. “Fact is, I've been out with him as far as Brindisi. He asked me to. ”

“ I have not the slightest doubt that sheer love of the road—and only a tramp knows what those words mean—is the controlling influence which keeps fifty per cent of the fraternity its willing slaves. What was Senhouse—that most fascinating of Maurice Hewlett's creations—but a tramp? A gentleman tramp, if you please, but still a tramp. What is the reason that Senhouse appeals so strongly to the imagination? Simply because he loved Nature. And in this matter-of-fact period when poetry is dead and even a by-word, the man who loves Nature, if not a poet, at least has poetry in his soul. ”