Part 34 (2/2)
As he looked that odd something occurred to Ishmael which suddenly puts a person in a new light--the slipping of the plane, the freakish turn of the kaleidoscope which makes the new light strike at a fresh angle something seen before and makes it different. He fell in love with Georgie in that moment, staring at her bent neck and the curve of her ear.
All day a delightful exaltation possessed him; he was not yet at the stage when a man is plagued with doubts of success or advisability; he was only tingling with a new delight. He helped her along any rough place when they all walked over to the Vicarage to tea with a joy he had not felt the day before, and he did not even know how irrational it all was.
At tea the conversation turned on different types of men, and Killigrew held forth on what he held to be the only true and vital cla.s.sification.
”The only division in mankind is the same as the only division in the animal world, of course,” he said.
”What is that?” asked the Parson. ”Wild and tame?”
”No; it is the division between the animal who goes with the pack and him who hunts a solitary trail. The bee is kin to the wolf because both are subject to a community-life with strict laws. The bee is nearer of kin to the wolf than it is to the b.u.t.terfly, which lives to itself alone. The fox, who hunts and is harried as a solitary, is further removed from his brother the wolf than he is from the wild cat, who has like habits to himself. My natural history may be wrong, but you see the theory!”
”And you carry that into the world of man?” said Judith lightly. In her heart was a sick pain and anger, and the brightness of the day had fled for her; with his few careless words Killigrew had re-created all the old atmosphere of depression, of--”It's no good, I know he's as he is, and that nothing I can do or that happens to me will ever make him any different....”
”Certainly it is the great division. Between the born adventurer and the community-man there is a far greater gulf fixed than between the former and an eagle or the latter and a cony. Lone trail or circ.u.mscribed hearth--between these lies the only incompatibility.”
”There is a good deal in your theory,” said Boase, ”but it goes too much for externals. The home-keeping man may be the one with the free spirit and the wanderer the man who cannot get away from habits that tie him to other people wherever he goes.”
”Sounds like a perambulating bigamist,” said Killigrew, laughing. ”But you're right as usual, Padre, and go to the heart of it while I'm being merely superficial. According to my division your brother Archelaus is a fox and an eagle and all the other lone things right enough, isn't he, Ishmael?”
”Yes,” said Ishmael slowly, ”I think he is.”
”Whereas you are the bee, the wolf, the cony,” declared Killigrew.
”Isn't he, Padre?”
Boase smiled. ”Shall I tell you what I think, Joe?” he answered, ”It is this. Ishmael is by circ.u.mstances and inclination a dweller in one spot, and custom and humanity incline him to tie himself always more closely to it and the people in it. But man is not as simple as your animals, and in most of us is something alien, some strain of other instincts.
The man who lives intimately on one piece of earth may have a deep instinct in spite, perhaps because, of it, to keep himself free and to resent claims even while he acknowledges them. Just as a man who is free to go where he likes, as you do, may carry his own chains with him. For the only slavery is to oneself, and it is the man who flows inwards instead of outwards who is not free.”
”I wonder ...” said Killigrew.
”The real flaw in your argument, Joe,” said Ishmael, ”is that your lone hunter in the animal world always has his mate and his young, whereas when you make the division apply to mankind you cla.s.s all that with the herd and deny it to the man who would be free.”
”Because that's how it translates into terms of humanity,” said Killigrew swiftly. ”Civilisation has made the taking of a mate a bond as firm as pack-law, and woe to him who, having yielded to it, transgresses it. It is not I who have made that division, it is the world.”
”He might have spared me this to-night ...” thought Judith.
Ishmael kept silence. He was thinking of the truth of what Killigrew had been saying, and weighing it against this new flame that had sprung up within him that day. Freedom--loneliness is the price paid for liberty, he knew that. And he had found loneliness sweet, or, when not actually that, at least very bearable. Yet even as he thought it he knew for him there was, as ever, at any crisis of his life, only the one way. He had that directness which, though seeing all ways--for it is not the same thing as simplicity--yet never doubted as to the only one possible for himself. On that long-ago day on the cliffs near St. Renny, when he had played with the notion of running away to sea, he had known all along in his heart that that way was not for him. When, to other natures, a struggle might have arisen between staying on at Cloom, carrying out his work there, and taking Blanche into the life she would have shared with him, the point had not even arisen for him. During the turmoil of mind and body that the break with her had left to him his victory over himself had never really been in doubt. When the pa.s.sion in him had met, as he could now see it had, the same feeling in Phoebe and he had been swept into that disaster, release had not appeared to him even a possibility. The new duties that had devolved on him since he had been free again all seemed to come quite naturally, without being sought by him, or even imagined until they floated into his horizon. So now this new thing had come upon him, and, wiser than he had been when he loved Blanche, wiser than when he had married Phoebe, he saw it glamour-enwrapped, yet he recognised the glamour. That he would marry Georgie if he could he was fairly certain, but that there was, as ever, the something in him which resented it, this mingling of himself with another human being, this pa.s.sionate inroad on s.p.a.ces which can otherwise be kept free even of self, he knew too. Acute personal relations.h.i.+ps with others makes for acute accentuation of self, and that was what, at the root of the matter, Ishmael always resented and feared.
CHAPTER XI
WAYS OF LOVE
A week later Boase said Evensong, as far as he was aware, to the usual emptiness, but when he went down the church afterwards to lock it up he saw a kneeling figure crouching in a dim corner. He went closer and saw that it was Judith--there was no mistaking that slim, graceful back and the heavy knot of dark hair. Her shoulders were very still and she was making no sound, so it was a shock to Boase when, on his touching her, she glanced round and he saw her eyelids were red and swollen in the haggard pallor of her face. She stared at him dully for a minute.
”What is it, my child?” asked Boase.
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