the beam of a lantern enveloped her and her gossamered surroundings; presently it blazed full upon her, discovered her flushed and reproachful face, curtained in hair. she saw a tall person, bareheaded, in what seemed to be white clothes, and, by a chance ray, that he was sallow, black-haired, smiling, and had black eyes. a young man! she had no fears left; she was on her own ground again.
“what under the sky are you doing here?” he said. she almost laughed.
“i’m caught in a hare-wire. it hurts very much.”
“it would, you know. let me look.” he knelt beside her, and then his quick fingers searched for the wire. as they touched hers she felt them cool and nervous. “i’ve got it. i say! it’s nearly through your stocking. no wonder you cried—but now you know why a hare cries. quiet now—i’ll have it off in a minute.” he dived for a knife, talking all the time. “i dare say you think that i set that wire for a hare, and caught you. you’re quite wrong. i don’t kill hares, and i don’t eat ’em; too nearly related to us, i believe. one minute more—” and he nipped the wire. “there—you are free. you can leap and you can run. perhaps you’d care to tell me why you battle in these brakes, tearing your frock to ribbons and scratching your eyes out, when you might walk that road like a christian lady. just as you please—why, good lord, you’ve got a bike! it beats cock-fighting. but don’t tell me unless you care to; perhaps it’s a secret.”
she stiffened her shoulders for the fray. “i wish to tell you because i’m ashamed of myself now. of course, it’s not a secret. i have punctured my bicycle, and have to walk home—three miles more. and i saw your light in front of me, and was frightened.”
his eyes were as bright as her own, but much more mischievous. “frightened?” he said. “what, of the light?”
“no, no, of course not. but some one must have lit it.”
“do you mean to say that you were frightened of me? the most harmless creature on god’s earth?”
she laughed. “how could i know how harmless you were? i thought you were gipsies.”
“i couldn’t be gipsies. perhaps i am a gipsy—i’m not sure that i know what i am. my father might, poor man—and he’s an alderman. that light, let me tell you, was going to cook my supper; and now it shall cook yours, if you’ll have some.”
an invitation suggested in that way can only have one answer from a young woman. “no, thank you. i must go on if i can. it’s dreadfully late.” he reflected.
“it’s late, but it’s not dreadful at all. these summer nights are made to live in. look at the moon on those misty bushes! nothing lovelier can be dreamed of by poets than the hours from now to dawn. sightseers always go for daylight—and in july everything’s blotted up in sap green. there’s no drawing in july—i say, you might get up, don’t you think?”
“yes, i might.” she tried, and sat down again with a wry face. “it hurts awfully.” he had watched the performance.
“i guessed it would. well, look here. i’ll help you.” he put out his two hands, met hers, and pulled her gently up by the wrists. “lean on my shoulder—lean as hard as you like.” so she did, because she must.
she limped by his side through the brake, and he talked on. it seemed to her afterwards that she had never heard so much talk in her life. singular talk too—as if to himself—no hint of her in it—no affected gallantry or solicitude—no consciousness of her presence, not even of her contact; and yet, when she stumbled and clung to his shoulder, he took her round the waist and supported her whole weight with his arm, and so held her until he had her safely by his fire.
he made her sit down upon his rug, took off her shoe and told her to take her stocking off while he got a rag. she obeyed without question, and presently had her ankle in a bandage, which smelt aromatic and stung her, but gave strength and was pleasant. she was very grateful, and entirely at her ease. “i think i’m glad that i was afraid of you,” she told him. “do you know that i’ve never been so taken care of in my life?” he was putting her shoe on at the moment, pulling tight the laces. “i don’t believe you,” he said. “you are the sort that was made to be taken care of—abominably feminine. the odds are that you’ll put my picture out of my head for at least three days—so i shall have to stop here until it comes back again.”
“then i’m very sorry—” she began, but stopped, as if puzzled.
“you need not be. i shall be perfectly happy. and it will give you a chance of biking out here to report yourself.”
was this an invitation? did he—? no; it was never done in that tone.
“i shall certainly come,” she said. “perhaps you’ll show me the picture. are you an artist?”
he nodded, busy preparing a dish for the fire, a little silver dish, into which he was breaking eggs. “i’m going to make an omelette; you are to eat half of it. i’m an artist in omelettes, i do believe. yes, i’m a sort of artist; a bad one, you know. but we’re all bad unless we’re the best of all—and there’s only one best. however, it’s all the same. you have your fun.”
“but—” she was looking about her with animation—“but where do you—? i mean, do you—?”
he chuckled, but mostly with his black eyes. “i know what you mean. everybody asks the same questions, and breaks them off at the same point. i’ll tell you. i live here, at this moment. i do travel in that cart—and this is my tent—and that ghost over there is my white horse—and hulloa! you’ve woken bingo.” a lithe grey dog came delicately forward into the light, with lowly head and lowly wagging tail. he was like a terrier, with hound’s ears, soft and sleek and silver grey. he sniffed at mary’s dress and feet, sneezed over the bandage, and, edging up, put a cool nose against her neck, and then a warm tongue.
“oh, what a darling!” she cried softly, and made much of him.
“he’s a bedlington,” said his owner, above the sizzling eggs, “a beauty and a devil. he likes you evidently—and reasonably. he won’t curl up like that on every lady’s skirts, i assure you. don’t talk though, or i can’t beat up this thing. talk to bingo; he’s my friend.”
this friendly, cool-tempered young man was, she thought, very odd to look at—long in the body and thin in the leg. he was quite new to her experience. gentlefolk she knew, and other folk, her own, and all the infinite gradations between—county, clergy, professional, retired military, down to commercial and even lower. this was a gentleman certainly—and yet—well, there was mr. duplessis, for instance, with whom you were never to forget that he was a gentleman and you were village. mr. duplessis was very easy, until you were easy too—then he got stiff directly, and back you must go. but this strange gentleman didn’t seem to notice such things; he seemed too full of what he was thinking about, or doing—and if he looked at you by chance, as often as not he didn’t seem to see you; and when you looked at him, he never noticed it at all. she adjudged him “foreign,” and to be sure, he had a narrow, foreign face, very swarthy, with a pair of piercing black eyes, a baffling smile, and quick, sudden ways of turning both against you, as if he had that moment found you out, and was amused. at other times, as she came to learn, those eyes of his could be fathomless and vacant, could stare through you as if you were a winter hedge. his hair was jet-black, and straight, and his moustache followed his mouth and curled up when he smiled. she had never seen a man so deft with his fingers or so light and springy on his feet. those long, eager fingers—she could still feel them at her ankle and marvel at their strength and gentleness as they sought about and plucked free the biting wire. his dress too was extraordinary—a long white sweater with a rolling collar, a pair of flannel trousers; no socks, but sandals on his feet. long and bony feet they were, beautifully made, she said. whatever he was or was not, certainly he was kind and interesting; and perhaps the most baffling quality about him was his effect upon herself—that she was entirely at home in his company, and had no care to know what he thought about her.
he served her with omelette hot and poured her out a glass of pale wine, which smelt like flowers, and was stronger, she found, than it seemed. a picnic at midnight! it was great fun! she glanced at her host, and was answered by a gleam. he was enjoying it, too. “do you know what i’m going to do next?” he asked her, breaking the first silence he had kept since the encounter. “i shall catch that absorbed ghost, which is really a horse, and take you your three miles in my cart. before that i shall mend your puncture for you.”
she wouldn’t allow that. “please, not. i can mend it quite well to-morrow, and won’t have you spoil your supper. i have had mine, you must remember and if i am to have another, i insist upon your company.” he laughed “all right,” and fell to again.
perhaps her wine made her talkative; but i think that she had leisure of mind to be interested. at any rate, she volleyed him a string of questions about himself, at all of which he laughed—but she found out mostly what she wanted to know. as thus—that cart contained his whole worldly property. “it’s my house, or my bed, or both; it’s my carriage and pair, my bank, studio, library, forcing-house, potting-shed, bath-room, bed-room, as i choose it. when it’s wet i can be dry in there; when it’s fine, i leave it alone. it’s all i have, and it’s more than enough. i’ve pared it down to the irreducible minimum, and yield now to one man only—the tramp. him i believe to be the wisest son of man, for he has nothing at all. now, you know, the less you have of your own, the more you have of everybody’s. the whole world is the tramp’s; but it can’t be mine, because of that shell on wheels. i am as the snail to the hare—but what are you, pray, and the rest of your shackled generation? . . .
“there’s a tent in that cart, which will go up in ten minutes—anywhere. and the materials of my trades are there—i’ve several. i scratch poetry—and paint in water-colours—and ain’t bad at tinkering.” at this she gazed with all her eyes; but he assured her, “i’ll mend you a kettle as soon as your bike. i learnt sawdering from a drunken old welshman under the shadow of plinlimmon. he died in my arms presently, and left me his tools as well as his carcase. . . . you need not be shocked. i do it because i like it—i don’t say that i should be ruined, mind you, if i gave it up . . . but one can’t paint against the mood, still less write. . . .
“i’ve done this sort of thing—and gardening (i’m a bit of a gardener, too)—for nine years or more, and shall never do anything else. why should i? i’m perfectly happy, quite harmless, and (i do believe) useful in my small way. i could maintain that, i think, before a judge and jury.”
he had no need, certainly, to maintain it at length before his present hearer, who was very ready to believe him; but he seemed to feel in the vein to justify himself.
“you see, i’m self-sufficient. i renounced my patrimony on deliberation, and support myself and a little bit over. tinkering don’t go far, i own—sometimes i do it for love, too. but i sell a picture now and then to a confiding poor devil who only asks to buy ’em, and do very well. i destroy most of ’em, because they don’t come off; if i had the nerve to sell those i should have more money for plants.”
she stopped him here. “plants!” she said, puzzled, “but——”
he quizzed her. “you look for my conservatory? my herbaceous border? i defy you. you’ll never find them. if you could the game would be up. all the same, all my superfluous pence find their way to the nurserymen—nurserymen of sorts. . . .”
as she did not press him he resumed his monologue. “mind you, i say that i have the best time of any man on this earth. but you’re judging me, i know. the women are always the worst. they think it such shameful waste of time, when one might be dressing one’s person, or looking at theirs.”
she wasn’t judging him at all; she was drinking him up—him and his wisdom. for the first time in her life she was really interested in something in a man which did not reside in his sex, or which, it is perhaps kinder to say, had no relation to her own. so absorbed was she that his cut at her kind did not affect her, if she heard it; but she noticed at once that he had stopped.
“please go on—please tell me more about yourself—about your way of life, i mean. oh, i think you are extraordinary!”
she had completely forgotten herself. her eyes had not for a moment left searching his face; her hands cupped her cheeks, her knees supported her elbows; and all about her arms and shoulders her loose hair streamed and rippled. her face was hot, her eyes like wet stars; she had never looked so pretty, perhaps because she neither knew nor cared anything about it, whether she looked well or whether he thought so. it was plain that he had other things to think of—and one thing is plainer, that if she had not, her hair would have been up long ago.
he laughed at her wonderment. “oh, i don’t know that i’m extraordinary at all—on the contrary, everybody else seems extraordinary to me. it’s so simple. i don’t doubt but i could make you see what a great life i lead—that’s my business as an artist. but it would do you no sort of good—and i’m not a proselytizer. the thing is to get your fun out of what you’re obliged to do—or, if you prefer it, to make it your business to do what you like. the socialists say so, and so do i. after that we differ. we differ as to ways and means. they say that people can only be made happy by dynamite. dynamite first, act of parliament afterwards. mr. wells tones down the dynamite; talks about a comet. it’s dynamite he means. that’s where he’s wrong. you can shred people’s morals by blowing their neighbours up—but not their characters. their morals will go to pieces because character remains. you don’t want that at all. morals will always follow character, and that’s what you must get at, but not by dynamite. well, how are you going to develop character? i say by poverty. pride’s purge! there’s my nostrum for the world-sickness—poverty, poverty, poverty! in fact, i’m a franciscan—by temperament and opinion, and not because i’m in love with the virgin mary. i have nothing, and possess all things; i’m rich because i’m destitute; i’m always filling myself because i’m always empty. do you see?”
she looked doubtfully, frowned a little, then took her eyes from him. “no, i don’t see. i don’t understand you. i know that you are not laughing at me; but i think you will now. never mind; you’ve been very nice to me.”
“my dear young lady,” he said, his glass in mid-career, “i assure you that i’m not laughing at all. i’m telling you what i believe to be literal truth. perhaps one of these days you will be really poor, and then you’ll agree with me. how can you fill yourself if you’re full already? and where do you find any pleasure in life except in wanting a thing, and getting it? can’t you distinguish between having and using? can’t you see that to possess this common, fenced and guarded by keepers and varlets of sorts, would be exactly the same as to use it as i do now, with all the hamper of the stake in the county added on to it?”
she looked at her toes, frowned, tried to think—then raised her eyes. “yes, yes, perhaps i see that. but you must know that i am quite poor. and yet——”
“ah,” he said, “you’re not poor enough. you can’t allow yourself to be. it isn’t pence that you must hoard, but opinion, my friend, the sound opinion of your neighbours—and of yourself, too. look here: apply what i’ve been saying about this common to every blessed thing—from god to groundsel, from the kingdom of heaven to your villa at putney—apply it to religion, to rank, to marriage, to murder, and blazes—and you’ll see. but you shall work it out at home, for i’m going to take you to bed.” he rose here and stretched himself, his hands deep in his pockets. her eyes pleaded.
“please, let me think of something first.”
“think away. we’ll talk presently, but now i’m going to raise the ghost.” he went lightly after his cropping horse, and mary sat by the fire.
how all this tilted her balances! he little guessed what deeps he had stirred within her simple soul. deeps! why, what fisherman had ever yet dropped his hook below the pretty surface? what evidence had she, or any one, that deeps there were? oh, the great views at his will and pleasure—this gentleman-tinker’s, who made omelettes in the middle of the night, and talked like a ruler of men, putting down and setting up with unfaltering voice, altering respects, changing relationships like a lawgiver. poverty—destitution—to go beggared of opinion as well as pence, and to be the richer for it? she might well pout her lips and wrinkle her little nose as she applied all this to her own concerns. her heart sank to view her own belittling. gossip, flirtation, little quarrels, and harsh judgments, a nod from mrs. james, a smile from miss de speyne, dresses, a new blouse, young perivale, mr. duplessis, mr. ——. no, no, not mr. germain! even now there was a faint throb of the heart as she thought of the day after to-morrow, and hugged the comfort of an excitement to come.
“ready, if you are,” she heard, and rose to join her host. the gentleman-tinker was in the road with his horse and cart, passing the reins along. bingo, snorting and stretching his hind legs, was very ready for the frolic.
“how’s the ankle?”
“much better. too much better.”
“nonsense. that’s one of the things we must have. i don’t preach abstinence from limbs.”
she laughed. “no, of course not. but i think that i should have liked to be kept in for a day—or two. and i know that i can’t be.”
“you’re better out, i suspect.”
“i’m not sure now—since you have been talking. you have made me think.”
“you’ll find it hard work. meantime you had better get up—it’s gone midnight.” that sent her up with a little shocked cry. he lifted in the bicycle, and mounted beside her. “now—where are we going?”
she told him. misperton brand was the first village he came to.
“oh, i know it,” he said. “i had adventures there, ages ago. i encamped in a park—lord somebody’s park—and they turned me out. but i met that lord afterwards, and he proved to be rather a good sort of man.”
“he’s lord cantacute. do you know the rector, mr. germain?”
“no. i don’t get on with rectors. they seem to think that i should go to their churches, but i never do. i don’t ask them to mine; why should they ask me to theirs? there’s an obliquity about christianity which beats me. what’s his name? germain? any relation of lord george’s, i wonder? celebrated man, to whom the americans ought to put up a statue. he gave them their country, i believe. gave it away to them, you might put it.”
she knew nothing of lord george. “there’s a mr. john germain,” she said, not quite ingenuously, “who is head of the family.”
he considered mr. john germain. “i believe i’ve come against him, too, somewhere. germain—germain—shotaway—shotover? that’s it—shotover house—big red and white place, with a pediment and a park. near reading. yes, i was turned out of that, too. solemn old boy, thin, with glasses.”
she flushed up in the dark. “he’s very nice. he’s staying here. i know him. he’s kind.”
her companion looked round. “do you mean that he’s kind to you, or kind all round? he wasn’t very kind to me. he said that i fostered contempt for my class. i admitted it, and he got angry. why shouldn’t i, if i believe it contemptible?”
“he’s very kind to me,” she replied seriously. “he’s a gentleman, you know, and——”
“and you’re a lady. well, that’s not necessarily kind—to you.”
“but,” she said, “you don’t let me finish. i am not a lady, you know—not of—well, not of his class. that’s why i think him kind.”
“i’m sure i hope you are right,” her friend said. “how does his kindness show itself?” she made haste to justify mr. germain.
“well, to begin with, in his being interested in me at all. he talks to me—he asks about my work.”
“what is your work?” she was shortly asked.
teaching, she told him; she was a governess.
he looked at her now, strange man, with real interest. “are you, though? by heaven, then there’s a chance for you yet. you’re above us all. he may well be kind, with the next generation depending entirely on you. teachers and mothers—no parson can beat that. is germain a schoolmaster?”
she began in a shocked voice, “oh, no! he’s a gen—” but was drowned in laughter. he threw his head up and laughed to the sky.
“you’re a wonder, i must say. i beg him ten thousand pardons—i forgot. of course, he’s a gentleman.”
mary was piqued. “that’s not very kind of you,” she said, with reproach in her tones, and he humbled himself at once.
“i’m very sorry, but i’ll confess the whole. the fact is, you’ve jumped into a little pit which i had dug for you—headlong. upon my word, i beg your pardon. but don’t you know that these class-boxes into which you plump every mother’s son of us, and are at such pains to keep guarded, lest one of us should step out, are the very things i’m vowed to destroy? why, god be good to us, what are we to do in our boxes—with all this going on?” he stretched his arm out—“this dappled earth, singing, and spinning like a great dusty ball through star-space! oh, i must talk to you again about all this—you, with children in your two hands to be made into men and women! but not now—it’s too serious. when are you coming to report your ankle, and tell me that i’m forgiven?”
she smiled upon him. “i’ve quite forgiven you. it was i who was foolish. i am sure you must be right. may i come on sunday? that’s my free day. i should like to talk to you—about lots of things.”
“delighted to see you,” he said. “come by daylight this time, and come by road. here’s your village opening.”
he set her down at the top of the street, since she would not allow him further. prepared to thank him with her prettiest, the words died on her tongue. “not a bit, not a bit,” he cut them down. “i love company. i’ve enjoyed myself immensely, orating away. you’re a rare listener; you seem as if you had never heard it before. good-night.”
she held him up her hand—he touched it—turned the horse, and was gone.
when she had lighted her candle the first thing she did with it was to hold it up that she might look in the glass. her hot eyes and burning cheeks were ignored for more serious disorders. “my hair!” and then she laughed. “he would not know whether i had any hair!”
late as it was, and tired as she was, sleep was long in coming.
