Part 5 (1/2)
”Yes, love,” said Mother Hubbard, but I doubt if she understood.
Mother Hubbard was in excellent trim, and I am beginning to think that there must be a good deal of reserve force in her delicate-looking little body. She led me to the brow of the hill whence one gets an unexpected view of the enchanting beauty of the Romanton valley, and said ”There!” with such an air of proud proprietors.h.i.+p, as if she had ordered the show for my special gratification, that I laughed outright.
I negotiated the steep downward path with difficulty, but she went steadily on with the a.s.surance of familiarity, pausing at intervals to point out the more notable landmarks.
We had lunch at one of the large hotels, and if Rose had seen the spread I ordered she would have had good cause to charge me with ”sw.a.n.kiness,” but I was having a ”day out,” and such occurrences at Windyridge are destined to be uncommon. Besides, no fewer than three magazines are going to print my old lady's picture, so the agents have sent me thirty s.h.i.+llings--quite a decent sum, and one which you simply _cannot_ spend on a day's frolicking in these regions.
When it was over Mother Hubbard showed me all the lions of the place; and after we had drunk a refres.h.i.+ng cup of tea at a cafe that would do no discredit to Buckingham Palace Road we set out on the return journey.
I was tired already, but I soon forgot the flesh in the spirit sensations that flooded me. We were now traversing the miniature high road which skirts the edge of the moor, and reveals a scene of quiet pastoral beauty along its entire length which is simply charming. I cannot adequately describe it, but I know that viewed in the opalescent light of the early setting sun it was just a fairy wonderland.
The valley is beautifully wooded, and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba together were not so gorgeously arrayed as were the trees on the farther side. A white thread of river gleamed for a while through the meadows, but was soon lost in the haze of evening.
Comfortable grey farms and red-tiled villas lent a homely look to the landscape, and at intervals we pa.s.sed pretty cottages with old-fas.h.i.+oned gardens, where the men smoked pipes and stood about in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, whilst the women lounged in the gateways with an eye to the children whose bed-time was come all too soon for the unwilling spirit.
And, best of all, my journey ended with a great discovery. We had climbed a steep hill, and after a last long look back over my fairy valley I set my face to the dull and level fields. Two hundred yards farther and my astonished eyes saw down below--the back of my own cottage!
That night no vision of factory chimneys disturbed the serenity of my sleep, for a haunting fear had been dispelled.
CHAPTER VII
THE CYNIC DISCOURSES ON WOMAN
”Woman,” said the Cynic sententiously, ”may be divided into five parts: the Domestic woman, the Social woman, the Woman with a Mission, the New Woman, and the Widow.”
”Nonsense!” snapped the vicar's wife, ”the widow may be any one of the rest. The mere accident of widowhood cannot affect her special characteristics. The worst of you smart men is that you entirely divorce verity from vivacity. The domestic woman is still a domestic woman, though she become a widow.”
”No,” returned the Cynic, ”the widow is a thing apart, if I may so designate any of your captivating s.e.x. Domestic she may still be in a certain or uncertain subordinate sense, just as the social woman or the woman with a mission may have a strain of domesticity in her make-up; but when all has been said she is still in a separate cla.s.s; she is, in fact--a widow.”
”I remember reading somewhere,” I remarked, ”that a little widow is a dangerous thing. Manifestly the author of that brilliant epigram was of your way of thinking. He would probably have cla.s.sed her as an explosive.”
He turned to me and smiled mockingly.
”I think all men who have seriously studied the subject, as I have, must have formed a similar opinion. The widow is dangerous because she is a widow. She has tasted of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
She knows the weak places in man's defensive armour. She has acquired skill in generals.h.i.+p which enables her to win her battles. Added to all this is the pathos of her position, which is an a.s.set of no inconsiderable value. She knows to a tick of time when to allure by smiles and melt by tears, and woe to the man who thinketh he standeth when she proposes his downfall.”
”My dear Derwent,” interposed the squire from the other side the hearth; ”you speak, no doubt, from a ripe experience, if an outside one, and no one here will question your authority; but surely the new woman and the woman with a mission may be bracketed together.”
The squire was leaning back in a comfortable saddle-bag, one leg thrown easily over the other and his hands clasped behind his head. A tolerant half-smile hung about the corners of his lips and lurked in the shadows of his eyes. He has a grand face, and it shows to perfection on an occasion like this.
The vicar sat near him. He is a spare, rather cadaverous man, who lives among Egyptian mummies and a.s.syrian tablets and palimpsests and first editions, and knows nothing of any statesman later than Cardinal Wolsey. An open book of antiquities lay upon his knee, and his finger-tips were pressed together upon it, but the eyes which blinked over the top of his gold-rimmed spectacles were fixed upon s.p.a.ce, and the Cynic's vapourings were as unheeded as yesterday.
The vicar's wife is the very ant.i.thesis of her husband. She is a plump, round-faced little body, and was tidily dressed in a black silk of quite modern style with just a trace of elegance, and a berthe of fine old lace which made me break the tenth commandment every time I looked at her. She was evidently on the best of terms with herself, and stood in no awe of anybody, and least of all of the Cynic, whom she regarded with a half-affectionate, half-contemptuous air. She had a way of tossing her head and pursing her lips when he was more than usually aggressive that obviously amused him. I had soon found out that they were old antagonists.
The Cynic himself puzzled me. I scarcely dared to look at him very closely, for I had the feeling that none of my movements escaped his notice, and I had not been able to decide whether his age was thirty or fifty. He is of average height and build, and was somewhat carelessly dressed, I thought. His dinner jacket seemed rather loose, and his starched s.h.i.+rt was decidedly crumpled. I wondered who looked after his menage.
His hands are clean and shapely, and he knows where to put them, which is generally an indication of good breeding and always of a lack of self-consciousness, and from their condition I judged that he earned his bread in the sweat of his brain rather than of his brow.