That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air.
There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is . . .’
‘The Elizabethans counted life well lost in an adventurous cause. I believe in their sense of duty, but I believe still more in their sense of adventure. And they share with the French the love of panache. Prudence is a hateful virtue. I believe the hatefulness of prudence is the chief cause of the unpopularity of Jews.’
He looked apologetically at me to see what I made of his dogmatic excursion.
‘I wonder whether you want me to go on with my story? You do! Well. Amos Pennistan said to me after a month had passed, “I’ve enough of Ruth’s nivvering-novvering.”
‘I thought that,’ said Malory, ‘an excellent expression — a moral onomatopoeia. Amos continued, “I’m going to say to her, ‘One thing or the other; either you take Leslie Dymock, or you leave him.’ ““Grand!” I said, “I like your directness, straight to the point, like a pin to a magnet. After all, over-much subtlety has weakened modern life and modern art alike. And what if she replies that she will leave him?”
‘I thought his answer a fine simple one, patriarchal in its pride: “There’s many young men besides Leslie Dymock that would be glad to marry my daughter; ‘tis not every girl has such a dower of looks as my girl, and a dower of this world’s goods thrown along.” Flocks and herds, she-goats and he-goats, I suppose he would have said, had he lived in Israel two thousand years ago.
‘So this ultimatum was presented to Ruth, who asked for a month in which to make up her mind. I saw her going about her work as usual, but I supposed that thoughts more sacred, more speculative, than her ordinary thoughts of daily labour, were coming and going in her brain, hopping, and occasionally twittering, like little birds in a coppice. I did not speak to her much at this time. I pictured her as a nun during her novitiate, or as a young man in vigil beside his unused armour, or as the condemned criminal in his cell, because all three figures share alike a quality of aloofness from the world. I only wished that Heaven might grant me a second Daphnis and Chloe for my depopulated Arcady, and I asked no greater happiness than to see Ruth and Leslie tangled together in the meshes of love.
‘September was merging into October, and again the orchards on the slope of the hill were loaded with fruit, the bushel baskets stood on the ground and the tall ladders reared themselves into the branches. We were all fruit-pickers for the time being. Of the apples, only the very early kinds were ripe for market, and of this I was glad, for I enjoyed the jewelled orchard, red, green, and russet, and yellow, too, where the quince-trees stood with their roots under the little brook, but the plums were ready, and the village boys swarmed into the trees to pick such fruit as their hands could reach, and to shake the remainder to the ground. We, below, stood clear while a shower of plums bounced and tumbled into the grass, then we filled our baskets with gold and purple, returning homewards in the evening laden like the spies from the Promised Land. Amos stood, nobly apostolic, his great beard spread like a breast-plate over his chest, among the glowing plunder. I was reminded of my Greek trader, and of the Tuscan vineyards; and the English country and the southern plenty were again strangely mingled.
‘Towards the end of the month, considering that if her mind had not yet sailed into the sea of placidity I so desired it to attain, it would never do so, I decided to sound Ruth upon her decision. You see, she interested me, disappointed as I was in her, and I had nothing else to think about at the time save these, to you no doubt tame, love affairs of my country friends. I had a good deal of difficulty in coaxing her into a sufficiently emotional frame of mind; as fast as I threw the ballast out of our conversational balloon, she threw in the sand-bags from the other side. My speech was all of the lover’s Heaven, hers of the farm-labourer’s earth. She was curiously on the defensive; I could not understand her. I was certain that her matter-of-factness was, that evening, deliberate. She was full of restraint, and yet, a feverishness, an expectancy clung about her, which I could not then explain, but which I think was fully explained by later events.
‘We got off at last, we went soaring up into the sky; it was my doing, for I had uttered the wildest words to get her to follow me. I had talked of marriage; Heaven knows what I said. I told her that love was passion and friendship — passion in the secret night, but comradeship in the open places under the sun, and that whereas passion was the drunkenness of love, friendship was its food and clear water and warmth, and bodily health and vigour. I told her that children were to their begetters what flowers are to the gardener: little expanding things with dancing butterflies, sensitive, responsive, satisfying; the crown of life, the assurance of the future, the rhyme of the poem. I told her that in love alone can the poignancy of joy equal the poignancy of sorrow. I told her of that minority that finds its interest in continual change, and of that majority which rests on a deep content, and a great many other things which I do not believe, but which I should wish to believe, and which I should wish all women to believe. I told her all that I had never told a human being before, all that I had, perhaps, checked my tongue from uttering once or twice in my life, because I knew myself to be an inconstant man. I made love by quadruple proxy, not as myself to Ruth Pennistan, or as myself in Leslie Dymock’s name to Ruth Pennistan, or as myself to any named or unnamed woman, but as any man to any woman, and I enjoyed it, because sincerity always carries with it a certain degree of pain, but pure rhetoric carries the pure enjoyment of the creative artist.’
I disliked Malory’s cynicism, and I should have disliked it still more had I not suspected that he was not entirely speaking the truth. I was also conscious of boiling rage against the man for being such a fool.
‘When I had finished,’ he went on, ‘she was trembling like a pool stirred by the wind.
‘ “You think like that,” she said, “I never heard any one talk like that before.”
‘Then I told her a great deal more, about her Spanish heritage and that disturbing blood in her veins, and about Spain, of which she knew next to nothing: that southern Spain was soft and the air full of orange-blossom, but that the north was fierce and arid, and peopled by men who in their dignity and reserve had more in common with the English than with the Latin races to whom they belonged; that as their country had not the kindliness of the English country, so they themselves lacked the kindly English humour, which mocks and smiles and, above all, pities; and that their temper is not swift, but slow like the English temper, but, when roused, ruthless and as little to be checked as a fall of water. I think that for the first time she guessed at a world beyond England, a world, that is, inhabited by real men. Before that, Spain and all Europe had been as remote as the stars.’
Malory told her all this, and then, when they were fairly flying through the air — I imagined them as the North Wind and the little girl in the fairy-story: hair streaming, garments streaming, hand pulling hand — he judged the moment opportune to return to Leslie Dymock. I fancy that the crash to earth again must have knocked all consciousness from the girl for a considerable interval. During this interval Malory dilated on the admirableness of the young man, his estimable qualities, and his worldly prospects. I could understand his scheme. He had planned to fill her with electricity, then to switch her suddenly off, sparkling and thrilling, on to Leslie Dymock. He had, I suppose, assumed that a certain sympathy had already inclined her native tenderness towards Leslie Dymock. The scheme was an excellent one in all but one particular: that his initial premise was radically false.
After the interval of her unconsciousness, she returned with slowly opening eyes to what he was saying. God knows what she had expected the outcome of their wild journey to be. Malory only told me that with parted lips and eyes in which all the mysteries of awakened adolescence were stirring, she laid her hand, a trembling band, on his hand and said,—
‘What do you mean? why do you sp
eak to me like . . . like this, and then talk to me again about Leslie Dymock?’
He asked her whether she could not find her happiness with Leslie Dymock and realise in her life with him all the pictures whose colours he, Malory, had painted for her. And she answered so bitterly and so scornfully that he charged her with having her heart still fixed on Rawdon Westmacott.
‘Still fixed!’ she cried, emphasising the first word, ‘and how could that be still fixed which never was fixed at all?’
He was baffled; he thought her an unnatural creature to be still heart-whole when her youth, her advantages, and that depth which, in spite of her tameness, her reserve, and his own protestations of her lack of passion — protestations which I suspect he continued to make for the strengthening of his own unsure belief — he instinctively divined, should have created a tumult in her soul. It was to him unthinkable that such hammer-strokes as Nature, Westmacott, and Dymock had conjointly delivered on the walls of her heart, should have failed to open a breach. Such breaches, once opened, are hard to close against a determined invader. He urged her to confide in him, he told her that his whole delight lay in the problems of humanity, that metaphysics and psychology were to his mind as sea-air to his nostrils. She only looked at him, and I think it was probably fortunate for his vanity that he could not read what a fool she thought him. I suppose that every man must appear to a woman half a genius and half a fool. Much as a grown person must appear to the infinitely simpler and infinitely more complex mind of a child.
He urged her confidence, therefore, seeing that she remained silent, although her lips were still parted, her hand still lying on his hand, and the expectation still living in her eyes, that had not as yet remembered to follow the lead of her mind. They were the mirrors of her instinct, and her instinct was at variance with her reason. He had come down to the practical business of his mission, while she lived still in the enchanted moments of their flight into a realm to her unknown. If her ears received his emphatic words, her brain remained insensible to them. He detached his hand from hers, to lay it on her shoulder and to shake her slightly.
‘Ruth! do you hear what I am saying to you?’
Her widened eyes contracted for an instant, as with pain, and turning them on him she prepared an expression of intelligent comprehension to greet his next sentence.
‘I am asking you to trust me as a friend. It’s lonely to be left alone with a decision. If you are angry with me for interfering, tell me to go away, and I will go. But so long as I may talk to you, I want to keep my finger on the pulse of your affairs, where it has been, let me remind you, ever since I set foot in your father’s house. I want to see you happy in your home, and to know that I accompanied you at any rate to the threshold.’
She broke from him, he told me, with a cry; ran from him, and never reappeared that evening. On the following day she accepted Leslie Dymock.
Chapter Five
‘There was a great deal of rejoicing,’ Malory continued, ‘in the Pennistan household over the engagement. Nancy and her husband came for a three days’ visit. I was glad to see my Daphnis and Chloe’s again, and to discover that all the sweets of marriage which I had described to Ruth were living realities in these two. They seemed insatiable for each other’s presence. Their attitude towards Ruth and Leslie was parental; nay, grandfatherly; nay, ancestral! Experience and patronage transpired through the cracks of their benison. Ruth was annoyed, but I was greatly amused.
‘It had been arranged that the wedding should take place almost immediately. Why delay? I am sure that Leslie Dymock was hungering to get his wife away to his own home. And Ruth? She accepted every happening with calm, avoided me — I suppose that she was shy, and left her to herself — was gentle and affectionate to Leslie, took a suitable interest in the preparations of her wedding. I was, on the whole, satisfied. I did not believe that she was much in love with Leslie Dymock, in fact I was inclined to think that she regretted her handsome blackguard, but I believed that her evident fondness for Dymock would develop with their intimacy, and that the bud would presently break out into the full-blown rose.
‘As for him, he would not have exchanged his present position with an archangel.
‘I asked Amos what had become of Westmacott. “Over at his place, like a wild beast in a cave,” he replied with a grin.
‘ “Is he coming to the wedding?”
‘ “Oh, ay, if he chooses.”
‘I now became concerned for my own future. Life at the Pennistans’ without Ruth would, I foresaw, be less agreeable although not actually unbearable. She and I had worked together in a harmony I could scarcely hope to reproduce with the hired girl who was to take her place, for you must realise that although I have only reported to you our conversations on the more human subjects of life, our everyday existence had been made up of hours of happy work and mutual interest. I seriously thought of leaving, and said as much to Dymock.
‘Some days afterwards that good young man came to me.
‘ “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “of your leaving and of your not liking, as you told me, to go away from the Weald till after next spring. Now I’ve a proposal to make to you,” and he told me of a cottage near his own place, with five acres, enough to support hens, pigs, and a cow, whose tenant had recently died. He suggested to me that I should rent this small holding for a year. “And you can walk over o’ nights, and have a bit of supper with us,” he added hospitably.
‘The matter was adjusted, and I told Ruth with joy that I should be within half a mile of her in her new life. I was grieved to see that she first looked taken aback, then dismayed, then irritated. I say that I was grieved, but presently I found occasion to be glad, for I reflected that if she thus resented the disturbance of her solitude with her husband it could only be on account of her growing fondness for him, and as I could not now revoke my tenancy I resolved that I would at least be a discreet neighbour.
‘How smugly satisfied we all were at that time! I feel ashamed for myself and for the others when I think of it.
‘The first indication I had that anything was wrong came about a week before Ruth’s wedding, when, walking down a lane near Pennistans’, driving home the cattle, I passed Rawdon Westmacott. We were by then near November, so the evening was dark, and I was not sure of the man’s identity until we had actually crossed. Then I saw his sharp face, and recognised the subtly Oriental lilt of his walk. He looked angry when he saw that I was myself, and not one of the herdsmen he no doubt expected. I wondered what the fellow was doing on Pennistan’s land.
‘The weather was bitterly cold, all the leaves were gone from the trees, and the fat, wealthy Weald was turned to a scarecrow presentment of itself. Instead of the blue sky and great white prancing clouds like the Lord Mayor’s horses, a hard sulphur sky greeted me in the early mornings, with streaks of iron gray cloud on the horizon, and a lowering red disc of sun. Underfoot the ground was frosty, and the frozen mud stood up in little sharp ridges. As it thawed during the day the clay resumed its slimy dominion, and I had to exchange my shoes for boots, as the clay pulled my shoes off my heels.
‘It was now two days before the wedding, and I sought out Ruth to make her my humble present. Never mind what it was. I had got her an extra present, which, I told her, was my real offering, and I gave her the case, and she opened it on a pair of big brass ear-rings. She got very white.
‘ “You can wear them now,” I said, “Leslie at least isn’t jealous of me, and here is the rest,” and I gave her the coloured scarf.
‘She took it from my hand, never thanking me or saying a word, but looking at me steadily, and put the scarf round her throat.
‘I added my good wishes; Heaven knows they were sincere.
‘ “Tell me you’re happy, Ruth, and I shall be filled with gladness.”
‘ “I’m happy,” she said dully.
‘
“And you’re fond of Leslie?”
‘ “Yes,” she said with such sudden emphasis that I was startled, “all that you said about him is true; he is kind and valiant, a man with whom any woman should be happy. I am glad that I have learnt how good he is. I am fonder of him than of my brothers.”
‘I thought that a strange comparison, but not wholly a bad one.
‘I tried to be hearty.
‘ “I am so pleased, Ruth, and my vanity is gratified, too, for I almost think you might have passed him by but for me.”
‘ “Yes,” she said, “yes, I would have passed him by.”
‘ “By God, Ruth!” I burst out, “he is a lucky fellow. Do you know that you are a very beautiful woman?”
‘She swayed as though she were dizzy for a moment.
‘ “I must go,” she said then, “and I haven’t said thank you, but I do thank you.”
‘She paused.
‘ “You have taught me a great deal. I have learnt from you what men like Leslie Dymock have a right to expect from life.”
‘ “And you will give it him?” I asked.
‘She bowed her head.
‘ “I will try.”
‘Now I thought that a very satisfactory conversation, and I went about my work, for beasts must be fed and housed, weddings or no weddings, with a singing heart that day. If, somewhere, a tiny worm of jealousy crawled about on the floor-mud of my being, I think I bottled it very successfully into a corner. I was not jealous of Dymock on account of Ruth; no, not exactly; but jealous only as one must be jealous of two young happy things when one remembers that, much as one values one’s independence, one is not the vital life-spark of any other human being on this earth. There must be moments when the most liberty-loving among us envy the yoke they fly from.
‘I clapped a cow on her ungainly shallow flanks as I tossed up her bedding, and said to her, “You and I, old friend, must stick together, for if man can’t have his fellow-creatures to love he must return to the beasts.” She turned her glaucous eye on me as she munched her supper. Then I heard voices in the shed.
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