Part 16 (1/2)
”The carriage is ready--we'll talk as we drive.” Then, against the rain he shouted: ”No gate in the fence, I know, but what about a ladder?
While I blunder, she's over the fence, and he----”
”But you were so close. There was not the time.”
”There is time for anything,” he said venomously, ”where a treacherous woman is concerned. I found her no better than a savage, I trained her, I educated her. But I'll break them both. I can do that; I'll break them soul and body.”
No one can break Ford now. The task is impossible. But I trembled for Miss Beaumont.
We missed the train. Young couples had gone by it, several young couples, and we heard of more young couples in London, as if all the world were mocking Harcourt's solitude. In desperation we sought the squalid suburb that is now Ford's home. We swept past the dirty maid and the terrified aunt, swept upstairs, to catch him if we could red-handed.
He was seated at the table, reading the _Oedipus Coloneus_ of Sophocles.
”That won't take in me!” shouted Harcourt. ”You've got Miss Beaumont with you, and I know it.”
”No such luck,” said Ford.
He stammered with rage. ”Inskip--you hear that? 'No such luck'! Quote the evidence against him. I can't speak.”
So I quoted her song. ”'Oh Ford! Oh Ford, among all these Worters, I am coming through you to my Kingdom! Oh Ford, my lover while I was a woman, I will never forget you, never, as long as I have branches to shade you from the sun.' Soon after that, we lost her.”
”And--and on another occasion she sent a message of similar effect.
Inskip, bear witness. He was to 'guess' something.”
”I have guessed it,” said Ford.
”So you practically----”
”Oh, no, Mr. Worters, you mistake me. I have not practically guessed. I have guessed. I could tell you if I chose, but it would be no good, for she has not practically escaped you. She has escaped you absolutely, for ever and ever, as long as there are branches to shade men from the sun.”
THE CURATE'S FRIEND
It is uncertain how the Faun came to be in Wilts.h.i.+re. Perhaps he came over with the Roman legionaries to live with his friends in camp, talking to them of Lucretius, or Garga.n.u.s or of the slopes of Etna; they in the joy of their recall forgot to take him on board, and he wept in exile; but at last he found that our hills also understood his sorrows, and rejoiced when he was happy. Or, perhaps he came to be there because he had been there always. There is nothing particularly cla.s.sical about a faun: it is only that the Greeks and Italians have ever had the sharpest eyes. You will find him in the ”Tempest” and the ”Benedicite;”
and any country which has beech clumps and sloping gra.s.s and very clear streams may reasonably produce him.
How I came to see him is a more difficult question. For to see him there is required a certain quality, for which truthfulness is too cold a name and animal spirits too coa.r.s.e a one, and he alone knows how this quality came to be in me. No man has the right to call himself a fool, but I may say that I then presented the perfect semblance of one. I was facetious without humour and serious without conviction. Every Sunday I would speak to my rural paris.h.i.+oners about the other world in the tone of one who has been behind the scenes, or I would explain to them the errors of the Pelagians, or I would warn them against hurrying from one dissipation to another. Every Tuesday I gave what I called ”straight talks to my lads”--talks which led straight past anything awkward. And every Thursday I addressed the Mothers' Union on the duties of wives or widows, and gave them practical hints on the management of a family of ten.
I took myself in, and for a time I certainly took in Emily. I have never known a girl attend so carefully to my sermons, or laugh so heartily at my jokes. It is no wonder that I became engaged. She has made an excellent wife, freely correcting her husband's absurdities, but allowing no one else to breathe a word against them; able to talk about the sub-conscious self in the drawing-room, and yet have an ear for the children crying in the nursery, or the plates breaking in the scullery.
An excellent wife--better than I ever imagined. But she has not married me.
Had we stopped indoors that afternoon nothing thing would have happened.
It was all owing to Emily's mother, who insisted on our tea-ing out.
Opposite the village, across the stream, was a small chalk down, crowned by a beech copse, and a few Roman earth-works. (I lectured very vividly on those earthworks: they have since proved to be Saxon). Hither did I drag up a tea-basket and a heavy rug for Emily's mother, while Emily and a little friend went on in front. The little friend--who has played all through a much less important part than he supposes--was a pleasant youth, full of intelligence and poetry, especially of what he called the poetry of earth. He longed to wrest earth's secret from her, and I have seen him press his face pa.s.sionately into the gra.s.s, even when he has believed himself to be alone. Emily was at that time full of vague aspirations, and, though I should have preferred them all to centre in me, yet it seemed unreasonable to deny her such other opportunities for self-culture as the neighbourhood provided.
It was then my habit, on reaching the top of any eminence, to exclaim facetiously ”And who will stand on either hand and keep the bridge with me?” at the same moment violently agitating my arms or casting my wide-awake eyes at an imaginary foe. Emily and the friend received my sally as usual, nor could I detect any insincerity in their mirth. Yet I was convinced that some one was present who did not think I had been funny, and any public speaker will understand my growing uneasiness.
I was somewhat cheered by Emily's mother, who puffed up exclaiming, ”Kind Harry, to carry the things! What should we do without you, even now! Oh, what a view! Can you see the dear Cathedral? No. Too hazy. Now _I'm_ going to sit _right_ on the rug.” She smiled mysteriously. ”The downs in September, you know.”
We gave some perfunctory admiration to the landscape, which is indeed only beautiful to those who admire land, and to them perhaps the most beautiful in England. For here is the body of the great chalk spider who straddles over our island--whose legs are the south downs and the north downs and the Chilterns, and the tips of whose toes poke out at Cromer and Dover. He is a clean creature, who grows as few trees as he can, and those few in tidy clumps, and he loves to be tickled by quickly flowing streams. He is pimpled all over with earth-works, for from the beginning of time men have fought for the privilege of standing on him, and the oldest of our temples is built upon his back.