that young man with the look of a faun, at once sleepy and arch, the habit of a philosopher and the taste for gardening at large, whom we have seen very much at his ease in society quite various, was by name senhouse—patronym, senhouse, in the faith john, to the world of his familiars jack senhouse, and to many mad jack. but madness is a term of convenience to express relations, and to him, it may well be, the world was mad. he thought, for instance, that lord bramleigh was mad, to whom we are now to hear him talking, as much at his length and as much at his ease as of late we saw him in the company of miss mary middleham, or of miss hertha de speyne of the cantacute stem.
perhaps he was more at his ease. he lay, at any rate, before his tent, full length upon his stomach, his crook’d elbows supported his face, which was wrinkled between his hands. his pipe, grown cold by delay, lay on the sward before him. one leg, from the knee, made frequent excursions towards the sky, and when it did, discovered itself lean and sinewy, bare of sock. his sweater was now blue, and his trousers were grey; it was probably he had no more clothing upon him. upon a camp-stool near by sat lord bramleigh of the round face, corded and gaitered, high-collared and astare. to express bewilderment, he whistled; concerned, he smiled.
“well,” he said presently, “i think you might. we’re short of a gun—i’ve told you so.”
“my dear man,” said the other, “i shoot no birds. i’d as soon shoot my sister.”
“that’s rot, you know, jack.”
“to me it’s plain sense. god save you, bramleigh, have you ever seen a bird fly? it’s the most marvellous—no, it’s not, because we’re all marvels together; but i’ll tell you this—boys frisking after a full meal, girls at knucklebones, a leopard stalking from a bough, horses in a windy pasture—whatever you like of the sort has been done, and well done—but a bird in flight, never! there’s no greater sight—and you’ll flare into it with your filthy explosives and shatter a miracle into blood and feathers. beastly work, my boy, butchers’ work.”
“rot,” said bramleigh—“but of course you’re mad. why are my cartridges filthier than your pots of paint? hey?”
“well, i make something, you see—or try to, and you blow it to smithereens—however, we won’t wrangle, bramleigh. you’re a nice little man, after all. those ramondias—it was really decent of you.”
“much obliged,” said the young lord; and then—“i say, talking of the pyrenees, you knew duplessis? he’s our man short. he’s chucked, you know. he’s awfully sick.” senhouse was but faintly interested.
“yes, i knew him—cleverish—conceited ass. what’s he sick about?”
“gel. gel goin’ to be married—to-day or something—end of september, i know. tristram’s mad about it. he was at san sebastian with me when he heard about it—and bolted off like a rabbit—mad rabbit.”
senhouse yawned. “we’re all mad according to you, you know. so i take something off. i can understand his sort of madness, anyhow. who’s the lady?”
“oh, i don’t know her myself. gel down at his place—in a poor sort of way, i b’lieve. companion or something—he played about—and now she’s been picked up by a swell connexion of his—old germain of southover. be shot, if he’s not going to marry her.”
the lengthy philosopher smiled to himself, but gave no other sign of recognition until he said, “i know that lady. brown-eyed, sharp-eyed, quick, sleek, mouse of a girl.”
“dessay,” said lord bramleigh. “they know their way about.” the philosopher threw himself upon his back and gazed into the sky.
“yes, and what a way, good lord! idol-hunting—panting after idols. maims herself and expects heaven as a reward. i don’t suppose that she has been herself since she left her mother’s lap. and now, with an alternative of being sucked dry and pitched away, she is to be slowly starved to death. i only saw her once—no, twice. she had what struck me as unusual capacities for happiness—zest, curiosity, health—but no chances of it whatsoever. ignorant—oh, lord! they make me weep, that sort. so pretty and so foolish. but there, if i once began to cry, i should dissolve in mist.”
“oh, come,” said lord bramleigh, “i don’t think she’s doin’ badly for herself. she was nobody, you know, and old germain—well, he’s a somebody. he’s a connexion of mine, through his sister-in-law—she was constantia telfer—so i know he’s all right.”
“i’ll do her the justice to say,” senhouse reflected aloud, “that she didn’t sell herself—she’s not a prostitute. she’s a baby—pure baby. she was dazzled, and misunderstood the sensation. she thought she was touched. she’s positively grateful to the man—didn’t see how she was to refuse. she’s a donkey, no doubt—but she had pretty ways. she could have been inordinately happy—but she’s not going to be. she’s in for troubles, and i’m sorry. i liked her.”
“she’d better look out for tristram, i can tell you,” said bramleigh. “he’s an ugly customer, if he don’t have his rights. not that there were any rights, so far as i know—but that makes no difference to tristram.”
“is she worth his while? i doubt it.”
“she will be. germain’s rich. besides, tristram sticks up for his rights—tenacious beggar.”
“should have been kicked young,” quoth the philosopher, and sped lord bramleigh on his way.
“mary middleham, o mary of the brown eyes and pretty mouth, i should like to see you married!” he thought, as he packed his tent. “there’s a woman inside you, my friend; you weren’t given her form for nothing. you are not going to be married yet awhile, you know. it’ll take more than a going to church to do that. you’ve got to be a woman first—and you’re not yet born!”
he lifted a shallow box of earth, and fingered some plants in it. “ramondias—beauties! one of these springs there’ll be a cloud of your mauve flushing a black cliff over the green water. there’s a palette to have given old england! mauve, wet black, and sea-green. i have the very place for you, out of reach of any save god and the sea-mews and me. but even with them you won’t have a bad ‘assistance.’ that’s a clever word, for how is the artist going to make a masterpiece unless the public makes half of it? black, mauve, and green—all wet together! we’ll make a masterpiece in england yet. . . .
“that girl’s great eyes haunt me. lakes of brown wonder—they were the colour of moorland water—a dainty piece! i could see love in her—she was made for it. a dark hot night in summer, and she in your arms. . . .! good lord, when the beast in a man gets informed by the mind of a god—there’s no ecstasy beyond the sun to compare with it. . . .
“two things worth the world—: power, and giving. when a girl gives you her soul in her body, and you pour it all back into her lap, you are spending like a king. why do women mourn christ on his cross? where else would he choose to be? a royal giver! to have the thing to give—and to give it all! he was to be envied, not mourned. . . .
“old germain—what’s he doing but playing the king on the cross. he feels it—we all feel it—but has he got anything to give? it’s an infernal shame. he’s bought the child. she’ll never forgive him; she’ll harden, she’ll be pitiless—have no mercy when the hour strikes. there’ll be horrors—it ought to be stopped. i’ve half a mind——
“damn it, no! she must go to school. if there’s woman in her, after travail she’ll be born. . . .
“to school? to duplessis? is he to school her, poor wretch? what are his ‘rights?’ squatter’s rights, you may suppose. so she’s to be a doll for germain to dandle, or an orange for duplessis to suck, and betwixt the feeding and the draining a woman’s to be born! wife, who’s no wife, mistress for an hour—and a pretty flower with the fruit unformed. . . .
“if i bedeck the bosom of england and star it with flowers, do i do better than germain with his money, or duplessis with his rights? and if i were to court her bosom . . . oh, my brown-eyed venturer in deep waters, i could serve you well! go to school, go to school, missy—and when you are tired, there’s halfway house!”
that evening under the hunter’s moon he struck his camp. he had told young bramleigh that he was soon for the west, where he preferred to winter. “i shall be in cornwall by november,” he had said, “and that’s time enough;” and this being late september, it is clear that he projected a leisurely progress from northamptonshire, where he now was, to the cornish sea. he had indeed no reason for hurry, but many for delay. that fairest of all seasons to the poet’s mind—that “close bosom-friend of the maturing sun” was to him foster-mother, whether her drowsy splendours fed him or he felt the tonic of her chill after-breath. he worked out, he said, in winter what he had dreamed in the autumn, and he could afford to lose no hours from her lap.
loafer deliberately, incurably a tramp, he was never idle—whether mending kettles or painting masterpieces (for he had a knack of colour which now and then warranted that word), his real interest was in watching life and in establishing a base broad enough or simple enough to uphold it all. he was not too proud to learn from the beasts, nor enough of a prig to ignore his two-legged neighbours: but for the life of him he could not see wherein a lord bramleigh differed from a ploughboy, or a mary middleham from a hen partridge—and it was a snare laid for him that he was constantly to be tempted to overlook the fact that they differed at least in this, that they had the chance of differing considerably. he would have been greatly shocked to be told that he was a cynic, and yet intellectually he was nothing more. he did himself the honour of believing most people to be donkeys: if they were not, why under the sun did they not do as he was doing?
the answer to that was that if they did, he would immediately do something else, and find plenty reasons to support him. he had not worked that out—but it’s true.
it was also true—as he had told mary middleham—that he lived from hand to mouth. his father, alderman senhouse, j.p., of dingeley, in the northern midlands, was proprietor of the famous dingeley main colliery, and extremely rich. his mother had been a battersby, well connected, therefore. he had been to rugby and to cambridge, just as duplessis had been, and at the same times; like duplessis he idled, but unlike him, he cost no man anything. for his needs, which were very simple, he could make enough by his water-colours, a portrait here and there, an essay, a poem. then—and that was true, too—he had the art and mystery of tinkering at his disposition. he had earned his place in the guild of tinkers—a very real body—by more than one battle. he was accepted as an eccentric whose whim was to be taken seriously—and as such he made his way. he had never asked his father for a sixpence since he left cambridge and was on very friendly terms with him. his brothers took the world more strenuously; one was partner at the colliery, another in parliament, a third—the first born—was recorder of towcester.
so much for his talents—now for his accomplishments. he was an expert woodman, a friend to every furred and feathered thing, could handle adders without fear, and was said to know more about pole-cats, where they could still be found, and when, than any man in england. he had seen more badgers at ease than most people, and was infallible at finding a fox. all herbs he loved, and knew their virtues; a very good gardener in the west said that the gentleman-tinker could make a plant grow. there’s no doubt he had a knack, as the rock-faces between land’s end and st. ives could testify—and may yet. he had a garden out there, which he was now on the way to inspect. but he had many gardens—that was his passion. he was but newly come from one in cumberland.
he said of himself that he was a pagan suckled in a creed outworn, and that he was safely weaned. there was a touch of the faun about him; he had no self-consciousness and occasionally more frankness than was convenient. the number of his acquaintance was extraordinary, and, in a sense, so was that of his friends—for he had none at all. accessible as he was up to a point, beyond that point i know nobody who could say he had ever explored senhouse. that was where the secretiveness of the wild creature peeped out. nobody had ever said of him that he had loved, either because nobody knew—or because nobody told. yet his way with women was most effective; it was to ignore their sex. “i liked her,” he would say meditatively of a woman—and add, “she was a donkey, of course.” you could make little of a phrase of the sort—yet one would be glad to know the woman’s opinion. we have seen that he could be a sympathetic listener, we know that he could be more, in moments of difficulty—and there we stop.
lastly, i am not aware that he had any shame. he seems always to have done exactly as he pleased—until he was stopped by some guardian of custom or privilege. this frequently happened; but so far as i can learn the only effect upon senhouse was to set him sauntering elsewhere—to do exactly as he pleased. he never lost his temper, was never out of spirits, drank wine when he could get it, but found water quite palatable. he was perfectly sincere in his professions, and owned nothing in the world but his horse and cart, bingo, the materials of his trade, and some clothes which had not been renewed for five years. we leave him at present, pushing to the west.
