With the passing years new feelings had grown up in the heart of Luke Claridge. Once David’s destiny and career were his own peculiar and self-assumed responsibility. “Inwardly convicted,” he had wrenched the lad away from the natural circumstances of his life, and created a scheme of existence for him out of his own conscience—a pious egoist.
After David went to Egypt, however, his mind involuntarily formed the resolution that “Davy and God should work it out together.”
He had grown very old in appearance, and his quiet face was almost painfully white; but the eyes burned with more fire than in the past. As the day approached when David should arrive in England, he walked by himself continuously, oblivious of the world round him. He spoke to no one, save the wizened Elder Meacham, and to John Fairley, who rightly felt that he had a share in the making of Claridge Pasha.
With head perched in the air, and face half hidden in his great white collar, the wizened Elder, stopping Luke Claridge in the street one day, said:
“Does thee think the lad will ride in Pharaoh’s chariot here?”
There were sly lines of humour about the mouth of the wizened Elder as he spoke, but Luke Claridge did not see.
“Pride is far from his heart,” he answered portentously. “He will ride in no chariot. He has written that he will walk here from Heddington, and none is to meet him.”
“He will come by the cross-roads, perhaps,” rejoined the other piously. “Well, well, memory is a flower or a rod, as John Fox said, and the cross-roads have memories for him.”
Again flashes of humour crossed his face, for he had a wide humanity, of insufficient exercise.
“He has made full atonement, and thee does ill to recall the past, Reuben,” rejoined the other sternly.
“If he has done no more that needs atonement than he did that day at the cross-roads, then has his history been worthy of Hamley,” rejoined the wizened Elder, eyes shut and head buried in his collar. “Hamley made him—Hamley made him. We did not spare advice, or example, or any correction that came to our minds—indeed, it was almost a luxury. Think you, does he still play the flute—an instrument none too grave, Luke?”
But, to this, Luke Claridge exclaimed impatiently and hastened on; and the little wizened Elder chuckled to himself all the way to the house of John Fairley. None in Hamley took such pride in David as did these two old men, who had loved him from a child, but had discreetly hidden their favour, save to each other. Many times they had met and prayed together in the weeks when his life was in notorious danger in the Soudan.
As David walked through the streets of Heddington making for the open country, he was conscious of a new feeling regarding the place. It was familiar, but in a new sense. Its grimy, narrow streets, unlovely houses, with shut windows, summer though it was, and no softening influences anywhere, save here and there a box of sickly geraniums in the windows, all struck his mind in a way they had never done before. A mile away were the green fields, the woods, the roadsides gay with flowers and shrubs-loveliness was but over the wall, as it were; yet here the barrack-like houses, the grey, harsh streets, seemed like prison walls, and the people in them prisoners who, with every legal right to call themselves free, were as much captives as the criminal on some small island in a dangerous sea. Escape—where? Into the gulf of no work and degradation?
They never lifted their eyes above the day’s labour. They were scarce conscious of anything beyond. What were their pleasures? They had imitations of pleasures. To them a funeral or a wedding, a riot or a vociferous band, a dog-fight or a strike, were alike in this, that they quickened feelings which carried them out of themselves, gave them a sense of intoxication.
Intoxication? David remembered the far-off day of his own wild rebellion in Hamley. From that day forward he had better realised that in the hearts of so many of the human race there was a passion to forget themselves; to blot out, if for a moment only, the troubles of life and time; or, by creating a false air of exaltation, to rise above them. Once in the desert, when men were dying round him of fever and dysentery, he had been obliged, exhausted and ill, scarce able to drag himself from his bed, to resort to an opiate to allay his own sufferings, that he might minister to others. He remembered how, in the atmosphere it had created—an intoxication, a soothing exhilaration and pervasive thrill—he had saved so many of his followers. Since then the temptation had come upon him often when trouble weighed or difficulties surrounded him—accompanied always by recurrence of fever—to resort to the insidious medicine. Though he had fought the temptation with every inch of his strength, he could too well understand those who sought for “surcease of pain”.
As the plough of action had gone deep into his life and laid bare his nature to the light, there had been exposed things which struggled for life and power in him, with the fiery strength which only evil has.
The western heavens were aglow. On every hand the gorse and the may were in bloom, the lilacs were coming to their end, but wild rhododendrons were glowing in the bracken, as he stepped along the road towards the place where he was born. Though every tree and roadmark was familiar, yet he was conscious of a new outlook. He had left these quiet scenes inexperienced and untravelled, to be thrust suddenly into the thick of a struggle of nations over a sick land. He had worked in a vortex of debilitating local intrigue. All who had to do with Egypt gained except herself, and if she moved in revolt or agony, they threatened her. Once when resisting the pressure and the threats of war of a foreign diplomatist, he had, after a trying hour, written to Faith in a burst of passionate complaint, and his letter had ended with these words.
Privately he had spoken thus, but before the world he had given way to no impulse, in silence finding safety from the temptation to diplomatic evasion. Looking back over five years, he felt now that the sum of his accomplishment had been small.
He did not realise the truth. When his hand was almost upon the object for which he had toiled and striven—whether pacifying a tribe, meeting a loan by honest means, building a barrage, irrigating the land, financing a new industry, or experimenting in cotton—it suddenly eluded him. Nahoum had snatched it away by subterranean wires. On such occasions Nahoum would shrug his shoulders, and say with a sigh, “Ah, my friend, let us begin again. We are both young; time is with us; and we will flourish palms in the face of Europe yet. We have our course set by a bright star. We will continue.”
Yet, withal, David was the true altruist. Even now as he walked this road which led to his old home, dear to him beyond all else, his thoughts kept flying to the Nile and to the desert.
Suddenly he stopped. He was at the cross-roads. Here he had met Kate Heaver, here he had shamed his neighbours—and begun his work in life. He stood for a moment, smiling, as he looked at the stone where he had sat those years ago, his hand feeling instinctively for his flute. Presently he turned to the dusty road again.
Walking quickly away, he swung into the path of the wood which would bring him by a short cut to Hamley, past Soolsby’s cottage. Here was the old peace, the old joy of solitude among the healing trees. Experience had broadened his life, had given him a vast theatre of work; but the smell of the woods, the touch of the turf, the whispering of the trees, the song of the birds, had the ancient entry to his heart.
At last he emerged on the hill where Soolsby lived. He had not meant, if he could help it, to speak to any one until he had entered the garden of the Red Mansion, but he had inadvertently come upon this place where he had spent the most momentous days of his life, and a feeling stronger than he cared to resist drew him to the open doorway. The afternoon sun was beating in over the threshold as he reached it, and, at his footstep, a figure started forward from the shadow of a corner.
It was Kate Heaver.
Surprise, then pain showed in her face; she flushed, was agitated.
“I am sorry. It’s too bad—it’s hard on him you should see,” she said in a breath, and turned her head away for an instant; but presently looked him in the face again, all trembling and eager. “He’ll be sorry enough to-morrow,” she added solicitously, and drew away from something, she had been trying to hide.
Then David saw. On a bench against a wall lay old Soolsby—drunk. A cloud passed across his face and left it pale.
“Of course,” he said simply, and went over and touched the heaving shoulders reflectively. “Poor Soolsby!”
“He’s been sober four years—over four,” she said eagerly. “When he knew you’d come again, he got wild, and he would have the drink in spite of all. Walking from Heddington, I saw him at the tavern, and brought him home.”
“At the tavern—” David said reflectively.
“The Fox and Goose, sir.” She turned her face away again, and David’s head came up with a quick motion. There it was, five years ago, that he had drunk at the bar, and had fought Jasper Kimber.
“Poor fellow!” he said again, and listened to Soolsby’s stertorous breathing, as a physician looks at a patient whose case he cannot control, does not wholly understand.
The hand of the sleeping man was suddenly raised, his head gave a jerk, and he said mumblingly: “Claridge for ever!”
Kate nervously intervened. “It fair beat him, your coming back, sir. It’s awful temptation, the drink. I lived in it for years, and it’s cruel hard to fight it when you’re worked up either way, sorrow or joy. There’s a real pleasure in being drunk, I’m sure. While it lasts you’re rich, and you’re young, and you don’t care what happens. It’s kind of you to take it like this, sir, seeing you’ve never been tempted and mightn’t understand.” David shook his head sadly, and looked at Soolsby in silence.
“I don’t suppose he took a quarter what he used to take, but it made him drunk. ‘Twas but a minute of madness. You’ve saved him right enough.”
“I was not blaming him. I understand—I understand.”
He looked at her clearly. She was healthy and fine-looking, with large, eloquent eyes. Her dress was severe and quiet, as became her occupation—a plain, dark grey, but the shapely fulness of the figure gave softness to the outlines. It was no wonder Jasper Kimber wished to marry her; and, if he did, the future of the man was sure. She had a temperament which might have made her an adventuress—or an opera-singer. She had been touched in time, and she had never looked back.
“You are with Lady Eglington now, I have heard?” he asked.
She nodded.
“It was hard for you in London at first?”
She met his look steadily. “It was easy in a way. I could see round me what was the right thing to do. Oh, that was what was so awful in the old life over there at Heddington,”—she pointed beyond the hill, “we didn’t know what was good and what was bad. The poor people in big working-places like Heddington ain’t much better than heathens, leastways as to most things that matter. They haven’t got a sensible religion, not one that gets down into what they do. The parson doesn’t reach them—he talks about church and the sacraments, and they don’t get at what good it’s going to do them. And the chapel preachers ain’t much better. They talk and sing and pray, when what the people want is light, and hot water, and soap, and being shown how to live, and how to bring up children healthy and strong, and decent-cooked food. I’d have food-hospitals if I could, and I’d give the children in the schools one good meal a day. I’m sure the children of the poor go wrong and bad more through the way they live than anything. If only they was taught right—not as though they was paupers! Give me enough nurses of the right sort, and enough good, plain cooks, and meat three times a week, and milk and bread and rice and porridge every day, and I’d make a new place of any town in England in a year. I’d—”
She stopped all at once, however, and flushing, said: “I didn’t stop to think I was talking to you, sir.”
“I am glad you speak to me so,” he answered gently. “You and I are both reformers at heart.”
“Me? I’ve done nothing, sir, not any good to anybody or anything.”
“Not to Jasper Kimber?”
“You did that, sir; he says so; he says you made him.”
A quick laugh passed David’s lips. “Men are not made so easily. I think I know the trowel and the mortar that built that wall! Thee will marry him, friend?”
Her eyes burned as she looked at him. She had been eternally dispossessed of what every woman has the right to have—one memory possessing the elements of beauty. Even if it remain but for the moment, yet that moment is hers by right of her sex, which is denied the wider rights of those they love and serve. She had tasted the cup of bitterness and drunk of the waters of sacrifice. Married life had no lure for her. She wanted none of it. The seed of service had, however, taken root in a nature full of fire and light and power, undisciplined and undeveloped as it was. She wished to do something—the spirit of toil, the first habit of the life of the poor, the natural medium for the good that may be in them, had possession of her.
This man was to her the symbol of work. To have cared for his home, to have looked after his daily needs, to have sheltered him humbly from little things, would have been her one true happiness. And this was denied her. Had she been a man, it would have been so easy. She could have offered to be his servant; could have done those things which she could do better than any, since hers would be a heart-service.
But even as she looked at him now, she had a flash of insight and prescience. She had, from little things said or done, from newspapers marked and a hundred small indications, made up her mind that her mistress’s mind dwelt much upon “the Egyptian.” The thought flashed now that she might serve this man, after all; that a day might come when she could say that she had played a part in his happiness, in return for all he had done for her. Life had its chances—and strange things had happened. In her own mind she had decided that her mistress was not happy, and who could tell what might happen? Men did not live for ever! The thought came and went, but it left behind a determination to answer David as she felt.
“I will not marry Jasper,” she answered slowly. “I want work, not marriage.”
“There would be both,” he urged.
“With women there is the one or the other, not both.”
“Thee could help him. He has done credit to himself, and he can do good work for England. Thee can help him.”
“I want work alone, not marriage, sir.”
“He would pay thee his debt.”
“He owes me nothing. What happened was no fault of his, but of the life we were born in. He tired of me, and left me. Husbands tire of their wives, but stay on and beat them.”
“He drove thee mad almost, I remember.”
“Wives go mad and are never cured, so many of them. I’ve seen them die, poor things, and leave the little ones behind. I had the luck wi’ me. I took the right turning at the cross-roads yonder.”
“Thee must be Jasper’s wife if he asks thee again,” he urged.
“He will come when I call, but I will not call,” she answered.
“But still thee will marry him when the heart is ready,” he persisted. “It shall be ready soon. He needs thee. Good-bye, friend. Leave Soolsby alone. He will be safe. And do not tell him that I have seen him so.” He stooped over and touched the old man’s shoulder gently.
He held out his hand to her. She took it, then suddenly leaned over and kissed it. She could not speak.
He stepped to the door and looked out. Behind the Red Mansion the sun was setting, and the far garden looked cool and sweet. He gave a happy sigh, and stepped out and down.
As he disappeared, the woman dropped into a chair, her arms upon a table. Her body shook with sobs. She sat there for an hour, and then, when the sun was setting, she left the drunken man sleeping, and made her way down the hill to the Cloistered House. Entering, she was summoned to her mistress’s room. “I did not expect my lady so soon,” she said, surprised.
“No; we came sooner than we expected. Where have you been?”
“At Soolsby’s hut on the hill, my lady.”
“Who is Soolsby?”
Kate told her all she knew, and of what had happened that afternoon—but not all.
A fortnight had passed since they had come to Hamley—David, Eglington, and Hylda—and they had all travelled a long distance in mutual understanding during that time, too far, thought Luke Claridge, who remained neutral and silent. He would not let Faith go to the Cloistered House, though he made no protest against David going; because he recognised in these visits the duty of diplomacy and the business of the nation—more particularly David’s business, which, in his eyes, swallowed all. Three times David had gone to the Cloistered House; once Hylda and he had met in the road leading to the old mill, and once at Soolsby’s hut. Twice, also, in the garden of his old home he had seen her, when she came to visit Faith, who had captured her heart at once. Eglington and Faith had not met, however. He was either busy in his laboratory, or with his books, or riding over the common and through the woods, and their courses lay apart.
But there came an afternoon when Hylda and David were a long hour together at the Cloistered House. They talked freely of his work in Egypt. At last she said: “And Nahoum Pasha?”
“He has kept faith.”
“He is in high place again?”
“He is a good administrator.”
“You put him there!”
“Thee remembers what I said to him, that night in Cairo?”
Hylda closed her eyes and drew in a long breath. Had there been a word spoken that night when she and David and Nahoum met which had not bitten into her soul! That David had done so much in Egypt without ruin or death was a tribute to his power. Nevertheless, though Nahoum had not struck yet, she was certain he would one day. All that David now told her of the vicissitudes of his plans, and Nahoum’s sympathy and help, only deepened this conviction. She could well believe that Nahoum gave David money from his own pocket, which he replaced by extortion from other sources, while gaining credit with David for co-operation. Armenian Christian Nahoum might be, but he was ranged with the East against the West, with the reactionary and corrupt against advance, against civilisation and freedom and equality. Nahoum’s Christianity was permeated with Orientalism, the Christian belief obscured by the theism of the Muslim. David was in a deadlier struggle than he knew. Yet it could serve no good end to attempt to warn him now. He had outlived peril so far; might it not be that, after all, he would win?
So far she had avoided Nahoum’s name in talks with David. She could scarcely tell why she did, save that it opened a door better closed, as it were; but the restraint had given way at last.
“Thee remembers what I said that night?” David repeated slowly.
“I remember—I understand. You devise your course and you never change. It is like building on a rock. That is why nothing happens to you as bad as might happen.”
“Nothing bad ever happens to me.”
“The philosophy of the desert,” she commented smiling. “You are living in the desert even when you are here. This is a dream; the desert and Egypt only are real.
“That is true, I think. I seem sometimes like a sojourner here, like a spirit ‘revisiting the scenes of life and time.’” He laughed boyishly.
“Yet you are happy here. I understand now why and how you are what you are. Even I that have been here so short a time feel the influence upon me. I breathe an air that, somehow, seems a native air. The spirit of my Quaker grandmother revives in me. Sometimes I sit hours thinking, scarcely stirring; and I believe I know now how people might speak to each other without words. Your Uncle Benn and you—it was so with you, was it not? You heard his voice speaking to you sometimes; you understood what he meant to say to you? You told me so long ago.”
David inclined his head. “I heard him speak as one might speak through a closed door. Sometimes, too, in the desert I have heard Faith speak to me.”
“And your grandfather?”
“Never my grandfather—never. It would seem as though, in my thoughts, I could never reach him; as though masses of opaque things lay between. Yet he and I—there is love between us. I don’t know why I never hear him.”
“Tell me of your childhood, of your mother. I have seen her grave under the ash by the Meeting-house, but I want to know of her from you.”
“Has not Faith told you?”
“We have only talked of the present. I could not ask her; but I can ask you. I want to know of your mother and you together.”
“We were never together. When I opened my eyes she closed hers. It was so little to get for the life she gave. See, was it not a good face?” He drew from his pocket a little locket which Faith had given him years ago, and opened it before her.
Hylda looked long. “She was exquisite,” she said, “exquisite.”
“My father I never knew either. He was a captain of a merchant ship. He married her secretly while she was staying with an aunt at Portsmouth. He sailed away, my mother told my grandfather all, and he brought her home here. The marriage was regular, of course, but my grandfather, after announcing it, and bringing it before the Elders, declared that she should never see her husband again. She never did, for she died a few months after, when I came, and my father died very soon, also. I never saw him, and I do not know if he ever tried to see me. I never had any feeling about it. My grandfather was the only father I ever knew, and Faith, who was born a year before me, became like a sister to me, though she soon made other pretensions!” He laughed again, almost happily. “To gain an end she exercised authority as my aunt!”
“What was your father’s name?”
“Fetherdon—James Fetherdon.”
“Fetherdon—James Fetherdon!” Involuntarily Hylda repeated the name after him. Where had she heard the name before—or where had she seen it? It kept flashing before her eyes. Where had she seen it? For days she had been rummaging among old papers in the library of the Cloistered House, and in an old box full of correspondence and papers of the late countess, who had died suddenly. Was it among them that she had seen the name? She could not tell. It was all vague, but that she had seen it or heard it she was sure.
“Your father’s people, you never knew them?”
He shook his head. “Nor of them. Here was my home—I had no desire to discover them. We draw in upon ourselves here.”
“There is great force in such a life and such a people,” she answered. “If the same concentration of mind could be carried into the wide life of the world, we might revolutionise civilisation; or vitalise and advance it, I mean—as you are doing in Egypt.”
“I have done nothing in Egypt. I have sounded the bugle—I have not had my fight.”
“That is true in a sense,” she replied. “Your real struggle is before you. I do not know why I say it, but I do say it; I feel it. Something here”—she pressed her hand to her heart—“something here tells me that your day of battle is yet to come.” Her eyes were brimming and full of excitement. “We must all help you.” She gained courage with each word. “You must not fight alone. You work for civilisation; you must have civilisation behind you.” Her hands clasped nervously; there was a catch in her throat. “You remember then, that I said I would call to you one day, as your Uncle Benn did, and you should hear and answer me. It shall not be that I will call. You—you will call, and I will help you if I can. I will help, no matter what may seem to prevent, if there is anything I can do. I, surely I, of all the world owe it to you to do what I can, always.
“I owe so much—you did so much. Oh, how it haunts me! Sometimes in the night I wake with a start and see it all—all!”
The flood which had been dyked back these years past had broken loose in her heart.
Out of the stir and sweep of social life and duty, of official and political ambition-heart-hungry, for she had no child; heart-lonely, though she had scarce recognised it in the duties and excitements round her—she had floated suddenly into this backwater of a motionless life in Hamley. Its quiet had settled upon her, the shackles of her spirit had been loosed, and dropped from her; she had suddenly bathed her heart and soul in a freer atmosphere than they had ever known before. And David and Hamley had come together. The old impulses, dominated by a divine altruism, were swinging her out upon a course leading she knew not, reeked not, whither—for the moment reeked not. This man’s career, the work he was set to do, the ideal before him, the vision of a land redeemed, captured her, carried her panting into a resolve which, however she might modify her speech or action, must be an influence in her life hereafter. Must the penance and the redemption be his only? This life he lived had come from what had happened to her and to him in Egypt. In a deep sense her life was linked with his.
In a flash David now felt the deep significance of their relations. A curtain seemed suddenly to have been drawn aside. He was blinded for a moment. Her sympathy, her desire to help, gave him a new sense of hope and confidence, but—but there was no room in his crusade for any woman; the dear egotism of a life-dream was masterful in him, possessed him.
Yet, if ever his heart might have dwelt upon a woman with thought of the future, this being before him—he drew himself up with a start!... He was going to Egypt again in a few days; they might probably never meet again—would not, no doubt—should not. He had pressed her husband to go to Egypt, but now he would not encourage it; he must “finish his journey alone.”
He looked again in her eyes, and their light and beauty held him. His own eyes swam. The exaltation of a great idea was upon them, was a bond of fate between them. It was a moment of peril not fully realised by either. David did realise, however, that she was beautiful beyond all women he had ever seen—or was he now for the first time really aware of the beauty of woman? She had an expression, a light of eye and face, finely alluring beyond mere outline of feature. Yet the features were there, too, regular and fine; and her brown hair waving away from her broad, white forehead over eyes a greyish violet in colour gave her a classic distinction. In the quietness of the face there was that strain of the Quaker, descending to her through three generations, yet enlivened by a mind of impulse and genius.
They stood looking at each other for a moment, in which both had taken a long step forward in life’s experience. But presently his eyes looked beyond her, as though at something that fascinated them.
“Of what are you thinking? What do you see?” she asked.
“You, leaving the garden of my house in Cairo, I standing by the fire,” he answered, closing his eyes for an instant.
“It is what I saw also,” she said breathlessly. “It is what I saw and was thinking of that instant.” When, as though she must break away from the cords of feeling drawing her nearer and nearer to him, she said, with a little laugh, “Tell me again of my Chicago cousin? I have not had a letter for a year.”
“Lacey, he is with me always. I should have done little had it not been for him. He has remarkable resource; he is never cast down. He has but one fault.”
“What is that?”
“He is no respecter of persons. His humour cuts deep. He has a wide heart for your sex. When leaving the court of the King of Abyssinia he said to his Majesty: ‘Well, good-bye, King. Give my love to the girls.’”
She laughed again. “How absurd and childish he is! But he is true and able. And how glad you should be that you are able to make true friends, without an effort. Yesterday I met neighbour Fairley, and another little old Elder who keeps his chin in his collar and his eyes on the sky. They did little else but sing your praises. One might have thought that you had invented the world-or Hamley.”
“Yet they would chafe if I were to appear among them without these.” He glanced down at the Quaker clothes he wore, and made a gesture towards the broadbrimmed hat reposing on a footstool near by.
“It is good to see that you are not changed, not spoiled at all,” she remarked, smiling. “Though, indeed, how could you be, who always work for others and never for yourself? All I envy you is your friends. You make them and keep them so.”
She sighed, and a shadow came into her eyes suddenly. She was thinking of Eglington. Did he make friends—true friends? In London—was there one she knew who would cleave to him for love of him? In England—had she ever seen one? In Hamley, where his people had been for so many generations, had she found one?
Herself? Yes, she was his true friend. She would do what would she not do to help him, to serve his interests? What had she not done since she married Her fortune, it was his; her every waking hour had been filled with something devised to help him on his way. Had he ever said to her: “Hylda, you are a help to me”? He had admired her—but was he singular in that? Before she married there were many—since, there had been many—who had shown, some with tact and carefulness, others with a crudeness making her shudder, that they admired her; and, if they might, would have given their admiration another name with other manifestations. Had she repelled it all? She had been too sure of herself to draw her skirts about her; she was too proud to let any man put her at any disadvantage. She had been safe, because her heart had been untouched. The Duchess of Snowdon, once beautiful, but now with a face like a mask, enamelled and rouged and lifeless, had said to her once: “My dear, I ought to have died at thirty. When I was twenty-three I wanted to squeeze the orange dry in a handful of years, and then go out suddenly, and let the dust of forgetfulness cover my bones. I had one child, a boy, and would have no more; and I squeezed the orange! But I didn’t go at thirty, and yet the orange was dry. My boy died; and you see what I am—a fright, I know it; and I dress like a child of twenty; and I can’t help it.”
There had been moments, once, when Hylda, too, had wished to squeeze the orange dry, but something behind, calling to her, had held her back. She had dropped her anchor in perilous seas, but it had never dragged.
“Tell me how to make friends—and keep them,” she added gaily.
“If it be true I make friends, thee taught me how,” he answered, “for thee made me a friend, and I forget not the lesson.”
She smiled. “Thee has learnt another lesson too well,” she answered brightly. “Thee must not flatter. It is not that which makes thee keep friends. Thee sees I also am speaking as they do in Hamley—am I not bold? I love the grammarless speech.”
“Then use it freely to-day, for this is farewell,” he answered, not looking at her.
“This—is—farewell,” she said slowly, vaguely. Why should it startle her so? “You are going so soon—where?”
“To-morrow to London, next week to Egypt.”
She laid a hand upon herself, for her heart was beating violently. “Thee is not fair to give no warning—there is so much to say,” she said, in so low a tone that he could scarcely hear her. “There is the future, your work, what we are to do here to help. What I am to do.
“Thee will always be a friend to Egypt, I know,” he answered. “She needs friends. Thee has a place where thee can help.”
“Will not right be done without my voice?” she asked, her eyes half closing. “There is the Foreign Office, and English policy, and the ministers, and—and Eglington. What need of me?”
He saw the thought had flashed into her mind that he did not trust her husband. “Thee knows and cares for Egypt, and knowing and caring make policy easier to frame,” he rejoined.
Suddenly a wave of feeling went over her. He whose life had been flung into this field of labour by an act of her own, who should help him but herself?
But it all baffled her, hurt her, shook her. She was not free to help as she wished. Her life belonged to another; and he exacted the payment of tribute to the uttermost farthing. She was blinded by the thought. Yet she must speak. “I will come to Egypt—we will come to Egypt,” she said quickly. “Eglington shall know, too; he shall understand. You shall have his help. You shall not work alone.”
“Thee can work here,” he said. “It may not be easy for Lord Eglington to come.”
“You pressed it on him.”
Their eyes met. She suddenly saw what was in his mind.
“You know best what will help you most,” she added gently.
“You will not come?” he asked.
“I will not say I will not come—not ever,” she answered firmly. “It may be I should have to come.” Resolution was in her eyes. She was thinking of Nahoum. “I may have to come,” she added after a pause, “to do right by you.”
He read her meaning. “Thee will never come,” he continued confidently. He held out his hand. “Perhaps I shall see you in town,” she rejoined, as her hand rested in his, and she looked away. “When do you start for Egypt?”
“To-morrow week, I think,” he answered. “There is much to do.”
“Perhaps we shall meet in town,” she repeated. But they both knew they would not.
“Farewell,” he said, and picked up his hat.
As he turned again, the look in her eyes brought the blood to his face, then it became pale. A new force had come into his life.
“God be good to thee,” he said, and turned away.
She watched him leave the room and pass through the garden.
“David! David!” she said softly after him.
At the other end of the room her husband, who had just entered, watched her. He heard her voice, but did not hear what she said.
“Come, Hylda, and have some music,” he said brusquely.
She scrutinised him calmly. His face showed nothing. His look was enigmatical.
“Chopin is the thing for me,” he said, and opened the piano.
It was very quiet and cool in the Quaker Meeting-house, though outside there was the rustle of leaves, the low din of the bees, the whistle of a bird, or the even tread of horses’ hoofs as they journeyed on the London road. The place was full. For a half-hour the worshippers had sat voiceless. They were waiting for the spirit to move some one to speak. As they waited, a lady entered and glided into a seat. Few saw, and these gave no indication of surprise, though they were little used to strangers, and none of the name borne by this lady had entered the building for many years. It was Hylda.
At last the silence was broken. The wizened Elder, with eyes upon the ceiling and his long white chin like ivory on his great collar, began to pray, sitting where he was, his hands upon his knees. He prayed for all who wandered “into by and forbidden paths.” He prayed for one whose work was as that of Joseph, son of Jacob; whose footsteps were now upon the sea, and now upon the desert; whose way was set among strange gods and divers heresies—“‘For there must also be heresies, that they which are approved may be made manifest among the weak.’” A moment more, and then he added: “He hath been tried beyond his years; do Thou uphold his hands. Once with a goad did we urge him on, when in ease and sloth he was among us, but now he spurreth on his spirit and body in too great haste. O put Thy hand upon the bridle, Lord, that He ride soberly upon Thy business.”
There was a longer silence now, but at last came the voice of Luke Claridge.
“Father of the fatherless,” he said, “my days are as the sands in the hour-glass hastening to their rest; and my place will soon be empty. He goeth far, and I may not go with him. He fighteth alone, like him that strove with wild beasts at Ephesus; do Thou uphold him that he may bring a nation captive. And if a viper fasten on his hand, as chanced to Paul of old, give him grace to strike it off without hurt. O Lord, he is to me, Thy servant, as the one ewe lamb; let him be Thine when Thou gatherest for Thy vineyard!”
“And if a viper fasten on his hand—” David passed his hand across his forehead and closed his eyes. The beasts at Ephesus he had fought, and he would fight them again—there was fighting enough to do in the land of Egypt. And the viper would fasten on his hand—it had fastened on his hand, and he had struck it off; but it would come again, the dark thing against which he had fought in the desert.
Their prayers had unnerved him, had got into that corner of his nature where youth and its irresponsibility loitered yet. For a moment he was shaken, and then, looking into the faces of the Elders, said: “Friends, I go again upon paths that lead into the wilderness. I know not if I ever shall return. Howsoe’er that may be, I shall walk with firmer step because of all ye do for me.”
He closed his eyes and prayed: “O God, I go into the land of ancient plagues and present pestilence. If it be Thy will, bring me home to this good land, when my task is done. If not, by Thy goodness let me be as a stone set by the wayside for others who come after; and save me from the beast and from the viper. ‘Thou art faithful, who wilt not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able; but wilt with the temptation also make a way of escape, that we may be able to bear it!’”
He sat down, and all grew silent again; but suddenly some one sobbed aloud-sobbed, and strove to stay the sobbing, and could not, and, getting up, hastened towards the door.
It was Faith. David heard, and came quickly after her. As he took her arm gently, his eyes met those of Hylda. She rose and came out also.
“Will thee take her home?” he said huskily. “I can bear no more.”
Hylda placed her arm round Faith, and led her out under the trees and into the wood. As they went, Faith looked back.
“Oh, forgive me, forgive me, Davy,” she said softly.
Three lights burned in Hamley: one in the Red Mansion, one in the Cloistered House, and one in Soolsby’s hut upon the hill. In the Red Mansion old Luke Claridge, his face pale with feeling, his white hair tumbling about, his head thrust forward, his eyes shining, sat listening, as Faith read aloud letters which Benn Claridge had written from the East many years before. One letter, written from Bagdad, he made her read twice. The faded sheet had in it the glow and glamour of the East; it was like a heart beating with life; emotion rose and fell in it like the waves of the sea. Once the old man interrupted Faith.
“Davy—it is as though Davy spoke. It is like Davy—both Claridge, both Claridge,” he said. “But is it not like Davy? Davy is doing what it was in Benn’s heart to do. Benn showed the way; Benn called, and Davy came.”
He laid both hands upon his knees and raised his eyes. “O Lord, I have sought to do according to Thy will,” he whispered. He was thinking of a thing he had long hidden. Through many years he had no doubt, no qualm; but, since David had gone to Egypt, some spirit of unquiet had worked in him. He had acted against the prayer of his own wife, lying in her grave—a quiet-faced woman, who had never crossed him, who had never shown a note of passion in all her life, save in one thing concerning David. Upon it, like some prophetess, she had flamed out. With the insight which only women have where children are concerned, she had told him that he would live to repent of what he had done. She had died soon after, and was laid beside the deserted young mother, whose days had budded and blossomed, and fallen like petals to the ground, while yet it was the spring.
Luke Claridge had understood neither, not his wife when she had said: “Thee should let the Lord do His own work, Luke,” nor his dying daughter Mercy, whose last words had been: “With love and sorrow I have sowed; he shall reap rejoicing—my babe. Thee will set him in the garden in the sun, where God may find him—God will not pass him by. He will take him by the hand and lead him home.” The old man had thought her touched by delirium then, though her words were but the parable of a mind fed by the poetry of life, by a shy spirit, to which meditation gave fancy and farseeing. David had come by his idealism honestly. The half-mystical spirit of his Uncle Benn had flowed on to another generation through the filter of a woman’s sad soul. It had come to David a pure force, a constructive and practical idealism.
Now, as Faith read, there were ringing in the old man’s ears the words which David’s mother had said before she closed her eyes and passed away: “Set him in the garden in the sun, where God may find him—God will not pass him by.” They seemed to weave themselves into the symbolism of Benn Claridge’s letter, written from the hills of Bagdad.
“But,” the letter continued, “the Governor passed by with his suite, the buckles of the harness of his horses all silver, his carriage shining with inlay of gold, his turban full of precious stones. When he had passed, I said to a shepherd standing by, ‘If thou hadst all his wealth, shepherd, what wouldst thou do?’ and he answered, ‘If I had his wealth, I would sit on the south side of my house in the sun all day and every day.’ To a messenger of the Palace, who must ever be ready night and day to run at his master’s order, I asked the same. He replied, ‘If I had all the Effendina’s wealth, I would sleep till I died.’ To a blind beggar, shaking the copper in his cup in the highways, pleading dumbly to those who passed, I made similar inquisition, and he replied ‘If the wealth of the exalted one were mine, I would sit on the mastaba by the bake-house, and eat three times a day, save at Ramadan, when I would bless Allah the compassionate and merciful, and breakfast at sunset with the flesh of a kid and a dish of dates.’ To a woman at the door of a tomb hung with relics of hundreds of poor souls in misery, who besought the buried saint to intercede for her with Allah, I made the same catechism, and she answered, ‘Oh, effendi, if his wealth were mine, I would give my son what he has lost.’ ‘What has he lost, woman?’ said I; and she answered: ‘A little house with a garden, and a flock of ten goats, a cow and a dovecote, his inheritance of which he has been despoiled by one who carried a false debt ‘gainst his dead father.’ And I said to her: ‘But if thy wealth were as that of the ruler of the city, thy son would have no need of the little house and garden and the flock of goats, and a cow and a dovecote.’ Whereupon she turned upon me in bitterness, and said: ‘Were they not his own as the seed of his father? Shall not one cherish that which is his own, which cometh from seed to seed? Is it not the law?’ ‘But,’ said I, ‘if his wealth were thine, there would be herds of cattle, and flocks of sheep, and carpets spread, and the banquet-tables, and great orchards.’ But she stubbornly shook her head. ‘Where the eagle built shall not the young eagle nest? How should God meet me in the way and bless him who stood not by his birth right? The plot of ground was the lad’s, and all that is thereon. I pray thee, mock me not.’ God knows I did not mock her, for her words were wisdom. So did it work upon me that, after many days, I got for the lad his own again, and there he is happier, and his mother happier, than the Governor in his palace. Later I did learn some truths from the shepherd, the messenger, and the beggar, and the woman with the child; but chiefly from the woman and the child. The material value has no relation to the value each sets upon that which is his own. Behind this feeling lies the strength of the world. Here on this hill of Bagdad I am thinking these things. And, Luke, I would have thee also think on my story of the woman and the child. There is in it a lesson for thee.”
When Luke Claridge first read this letter years before, he had put it from him sternly. Now he heard it with a soft emotion. He took the letter from Faith at last and put it in his pocket. With no apparent relevancy, and laying his hand on Faith’s shoulder, he said:
“We have done according to our conscience by Davy—God is our witness, so!”
She leaned her cheek against his hand, but did not speak.
In Soolsby’s hut upon the hill David sat talking to the old chair-maker. Since his return he had visited the place several times, only to find Soolsby absent. The old man, on awaking from his drunken sleep, had been visited by a terrible remorse, and, whenever he had seen David coming, had fled into the woods. This evening, however, David came in the dark, and Soolsby was caught.
When David entered first, the old man broke down. He could not speak, but leaned upon the back of a chair, and though his lips moved, no sound came forth. But David took him by the shoulders and set him down, and laughed gently in his face, and at last Soolsby got voice and said:
“Egyptian! O Egyptian!”
Then his tongue was loosened and his eye glistened, and he poured out question after question, many pertinent, some whimsical, all frankly answered by David. But suddenly he stopped short, and his eyes sank before the other, who had laid a hand upon his knee.
“But don’t, Egyptian, don’t! Don’t have aught to do with me. I’m only a drunken swine. I kept sober four years, as she knows—as the Angel down yonder in the Red Mansion knows; but the day you came, going out to meet you, I got drunk—blind drunk. I had only been pretending all the time. I was being coaxed along—made believe I was a real man, I suppose. But I wasn’t. I was a pillar of sand. When pressure came I just broke down—broke down, Egyptian. Don’t be surprised if you hear me grunt. It’s my natural speech. I’m a hog, a drink-swilling hog. I wasn’t decent enough to stay sober till you had said ‘Good day,’ and ‘How goes it, Soolsby?’ I tried it on; it was no good. I began to live like a man, but I’ve slipped back into the ditch. You didn’t know that, did you?”
David let him have his say, and then in a low voice said: “Yes, I knew thee had been drinking, Soolsby.” He started. “She told you—Kate Heaver—”
“She did not tell me. I came and found you here with her. You were asleep.”
“A drunken sweep!” He spat upon the ground in disgust at himself.
“I ought never have comeback here,” he added. “It was no place for me. But it drew me. I didn’t belong; but it drew me.”
“Thee belongs to Hamley. Thee is an honour to Hamley, Soolsby.”
Soolsby’s eyes widened; the blurred look of rage and self-reproach in them began to fade away.
“Thee has made a fight, Soolsby, to conquer a thing that has had thee by the throat. There’s no fighting like it. It means a watching every hour, every minute—thee can never take the eye off it. Some days it’s easy, some days it’s hard, but it’s never so easy that you can say, ‘There is no need to watch.’ In sleep it whispers and wakes you; in the morning, when there are no shadows, it casts a shadow on the path. It comes between you and your work; you see it looking out of the eyes of a friend. And one day, when you think it has been conquered, that you have worn it down into oblivion and the dust, and you close your eyes and say, ‘I am master,’ up it springs with fury from nowhere you can see, and catches you by the throat; and the fight begins again. But you sit stronger, and the fight becomes shorter; and after many battles, and you have learned never to be off guard, to know by instinct where every ambush is, then at last the victory is yours. It is hard, it is bitter, and sometimes it seems hardly worth the struggle. But it is—it is worth the struggle, dear old man.”
Soolsby dropped on his knees and caught David by the arms. “How did you know-how did you know?” he asked hoarsely. “It’s been just as you say. You’ve watched some one fighting?”
“I have watched some one fighting—fighting,” answered David clearly, but his eyes were moist.
“With drink, the same as me?”
“No, with opium—laudanum.”
“Oh, I’ve heard that’s worse, that it makes you mad, the wanting it.”
“I have seen it so.”
“Did the man break down like me?”
“Only once, but the fight is not yet over with him.”
“Was he—an Englishman?”
David inclined his head. “It’s a great thing to have a temptation to fight, Soolsby. Then we can understand others.”
“It’s not always true, Egyptian, for you have never had temptation to fight. Yet you know it all.”
“God has been good to me,” David answered, putting a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “And thee is a credit to Hamley, friend. Thee will never fall again.”
“You know that—you say that to me! Then, by Mary the mother of God, I never will be a swine again,” he said, getting to his feet.
“Well, good-bye, Soolsby. I go to-morrow,” David said presently.
Soolsby frowned; his lips worked. “When will you come back?” he asked eagerly.
David smiled. “There is so much to do, they may not let me come—not soon. I am going into the desert again.”
Soolsby was shaking. He spoke huskily. “Here is your place,” he said. “You shall come back—Oh, but you shall come back, here, where you belong.”
David shook his head and smiled, and clasped the strong hand again. A moment later he was gone. From the door of the but Soolsby muttered to himself:
“I will bring you back. If Luke Claridge doesn’t, then I will bring you back. If he dies, I will bring you—no, by the love of God, I will bring you back while he lives!”