________________________________________________
_ That same day Rickie, feeling neither poor nor aimless, left the
Ansells' for a night's visit to Cadover. His aunt had invited
him--why, he could not think, nor could he think why he should
refuse the invitation. She could not annoy him now, and he was
not vindictive. In the dell near Madingley he had cried, "I hate
no one," in his ignorance. Now, with full knowledge, he hated no
one again. The weather was pleasant, the county attractive, and
he was ready for a little change.
Maud and Stewart saw him off. Stephen, who was down for the
holiday, had been left with his chin on the luncheon table. He
had wanted to come also. Rickie pointed out that you cannot visit
where you have broken the windows. There was an argument--there
generally was--and now the young man had turned sulky.
"Let him do what he likes," said Ansell. "He knows more than we
do. He knows everything."
"Is he to get drunk?" Rickie asked.
"Most certainly."
"And to go where he isn't asked?"
Maud, though liking a little spirit in a man, declared this to be
impossible.
"Well, I wish you joy!" Rickie called, as the train moved away.
"He means mischief this evening. He told me piously that he felt
it beating up. Good-bye!"
"But we'll wait for you to pass," they cried. For the Salisbury
train always backed out of the station and then returned, and the
Ansell family, including Stewart, took an incredible pleasure in
seeing it do this.
The carriage was empty. Rickie settled himself down for his
little journey. First he looked at the coloured photographs. Then
he read the directions for obtaining luncheon-baskets, and felt
the texture of the cushions. Through the windows a signal-box
interested him. Then he saw the ugly little town that was now his
home, and up its chief street the Ansells' memorable facade. The
spirit of a genial comedy dwelt there. It was so absurd, so
kindly. The house was divided against itself and yet stood.
Metaphysics, commerce, social aspirations--all lived together in
harmony. Mr. Ansell had done much, but one was tempted to believe
in a more capricious power--the power that abstains from
"nipping." "One nips or is nipped, and never knows
beforehand," quoted Rickie, and opened the poems of Shelley, a
man less foolish than you supposed. How pleasant it was to read!
If business worried him, if Stephen was noisy or Ansell perverse,
there still remained this paradise of books. It seemed as if he
had read nothing for two years.
Then the train stopped for the shunting, and he heard protests
from minor officials who were working on the line. They
complained that some one who didn't ought to, had mounted on
the footboard of the carriage. Stephen's face appeared, convulsed
with laughter. With the action of a swimmer he dived in through
the open window, and fell comfortably on Rickie's luggage and
Rickie. He declared it was the finest joke ever known. Rickie was
not so sure. "You'll be run over next," he said. "What did you do
that for?"
"I'm coming with you," he giggled, rolling all that he could on
to the dusty floor.
"Now, Stephen, this is too bad. Get up. We went into the whole
question yesterday."
"I know; and I settled we wouldn't go into it again, spoiling my
holiday."
"Well, it's execrable taste."
Now he was waving to the Ansells, and showing them a piece of
soap: it was all his luggage, and even that he abandoned, for he
flung it at Stewart's lofty brow.
"I can't think what you've done it for. You know how strongly I
felt."
Stephen replied that he should stop in the village; meet Rickie
at the lodge gates; that kind of thing.
"It's execrable taste," he repeated, trying to keep grave.
"Well, you did all you could," he exclaimed with sudden sympathy.
"Leaving me talking to old Ansell, you might have thought you'd
got your way. I've as much taste as most chaps, but, hang it!
your aunt isn't the German Emperor. She doesn't own Wiltshire."
"You ass!" sputtered Rickie, who had taken to laugh at nonsense
again.
"No, she isn't," he repeated, blowing a kiss out of the window to
maidens. "Why, we started for Wiltshire on the wet morning!"
"When Stewart found us at Sawston railway station?" He smiled
happily. "I never thought we should pull through."
"Well, we DIDN'T. We never did what we meant. It's nonsense that
I couldn't have managed you alone. I've a notion. Slip out after
your dinner this evening, and we'll get thundering tight
together."
"I've a notion I won't."
"It'd do you no end of good. You'll get to know people--
shepherds, carters--" He waved his arms vaguely, indicating
democracy. "Then you'll sing."
"And then?"
"Plop."
"Precisely."
"But I'll catch you," promised Stephen. "We shall carry you up
the hill to bed. In the morning you wake, have your row with old
Em'ly, she kicks you out, we meet--we'll meet at the Rings!" He
danced up and down the carriage. Some one in the next carriage
punched at the partition, and when this happens, all lads with
mettle know that they must punch the partition back.
"Thank you. I've a notion I won't," said Rickie when the noise
had subsided--subsided for a moment only, for the following
conversation took place to an accompaniment of dust and bangs.
"Except as regards the Rings. We will meet there."
"Then I'll get tight by myself."
"No, you won't."
"Yes, I will. I swore to do something special this evening. I
feel like it."
"In that case, I get out at the next station." He was laughing,
but quite determined. Stephen had grown too dictatorial of late.
The Ansells spoilt him. "It's bad enough having you there at all.
Having you there drunk is impossible. I'd sooner not visit my
aunt than think, when I sat with her, that you're down in the
village teaching her labourers to be as beastly as yourself. Go
if you will. But not with me."
"Why shouldn't I have a good time while I'm young, if I don't
harm any one?" said Stephen defiantly.
"Need we discuss self."
"Oh, I can stop myself any minute I choose. I just say 'I won't'
to you or any other fool, and I don't."
Rickie knew that the boast was true. He continued, "There is also
a thing called Morality. You may learn in the Bible, and also
from the Greeks, that your body is a temple."
"So you said in your longest letter."
"Probably I wrote like a prig, for the reason that I have never
been tempted in this way; but surely it is wrong that your body
should escape you."
"I don't follow," he retorted, punching.
"It isn't right, even for a little time, to forget that you
exist."
"I suppose you've never been tempted to go to sleep?"
Just then the train passed through a coppice in which the grey
undergrowth looked no more alive than firewood. Yet every twig in
it was waiting for the spring. Rickie knew that the analogy was
false, but argument confused him, and he gave up this line of
attack also.
"Do be more careful over life. If your body escapes you in one
thing, why not in more? A man will have other temptations."
"You mean women," said Stephen quietly, pausing for a moment in
this game. "But that's absolutely different. That would be
harming some one else."
"Is that the only thing that keeps you straight?"
"What else should?" And he looked not into Rickie, but past him,
with the wondering eyes of a child. Rickie nodded, and referred
himself to the window.
He observed that the country was smoother and more plastic. The
woods had gone, and under a pale-blue sky long contours of earth
were flowing, and merging, rising a little to bear some coronal
of beeches, parting a little to disclose some green valley, where
cottages stood under elms or beside translucent waters. It was
Wiltshire at last. The train had entered the chalk. At last it
slackened at a wayside platform. Without speaking he opened the
door.
"What's that for?"
"To go back."
Stephen had forgotten the threat. He said that this was not
playing the game.
"Surely!"
"I can't have you going back."
"Promise to behave decently then."
He was seized and pulled away from the door.
"We change at Salisbury," he remarked. "There is an hour to
wait. You will find me troublesome."
"It isn't fair," exploded Stephen. "It's a lowdown trick. How can
I let you go back?"
"Promise, then."
"Oh, yes, yes, yes. Y.M.C.A. But for this occasion only."
"No, no. For the rest of your holiday."
"Yes, yes. Very well. I promise."
"For the rest of your life?"
Somehow it pleased him that Stephen should bang him crossly with
his elbow and say, "No. Get out. You've gone too far." So had the
train. The porter at the end of the wayside platform slammed the
door, and they proceeded toward Salisbury through the slowly
modulating downs. Rickie pretended to read. Over the book he
watched his brother's face, and wondered how bad temper could be
consistent with a mind so radiant. In spite of his obstinacy and
conceit, Stephen was an easy person to live with. He never
fidgeted or nursed hidden grievances, or indulged in a shoddy
pride. Though he spent Rickie's money as slowly as he could, he
asked for it without apology: "You must put it down against me,"
he would say. In time--it was still very vague--he would rent or
purchase a farm. There is no formula in which we may sum up
decent people. So Ansell had preached, and had of course
proceeded to offer a formula: "They must be serious, they must be
truthful." Serious not in the sense of glum; but they must be
convinced that our life is a state of some importance, and our
earth not a place to beat time on. Of so much Stephen was
convinced: he showed it in his work, in his play, in his
self-respect, and above all--though the fact is hard to face-in
his sacred passion for alcohol. Drink, today, is an unlovely
thing. Between us and the heights of Cithaeron the river of sin
now flows. Yet the cries still call from the mountain, and
granted a man has responded to them, it is better he respond with
the candour of the Greek.
"I shall stop at the Thompsons' now," said the disappointed
reveller. "Prayers."
Rickie did not press his triumph, but it was a happy moment,
partly because of the triumph, partly because he was sure that
his brother must care for him. Stephen was too selfish to give up
any pleasure without grave reasons. He was certain that he had
been right to disentangle himself from Sawston, and to ignore the
threats and tears that still tempted him to return. Here there
was real work for him to do. Moreover, though he sought no
reward, it had come. His health was better, his brain sound, his
life washed clean, not by the waters of sentiment, but by the
efforts of a fellow-man. Stephen was man first, brother
afterwards. Herein lay his brutality and also his virtue. "Look
me in the face. Don't hang on me clothes that don't belong--as
you did on your wife, giving her saint's robes, whereas she was
simply a woman of her own sort, who needed careful watching. Tear
up the photographs. Here am I, and there are you. The rest is
cant." The rest was not cant, and perhaps Stephen would confess
as much in time. But Rickie needed a tonic, and a man, not a
brother, must hold it to his lips.
"I see the old spire," he called, and then added, "I don't mind
seeing it again."
"No one does, as far as I know. People have come from the other
side of the world to see it again."
"Pious people. But I don't hold with bishops." He was young
enough to be uneasy. The cathedral, a fount of superstition, must
find no place in his life. At the age of twenty he had settled
things.
"I've got my own philosophy," he once told Ansell, "and I don't
care a straw about yours." Ansell's mirth had annoyed him not a
little. And it was strange that one so settled should feel his
heart leap up at the sight of an old spire. "I regard it as a
public building," he told Rickie, who agreed. "It's useful, too,
as a landmark." His attitude today was defensive. It was part of
a subtle change that Rickie had noted in him since his return
from Scotland. His face gave hints of a new maturity. "You can
see the old spire from the Ridgeway," he said, suddenly laying a
hand on Rickie's knee, "before rain as clearly as any telegraph
post."
"How far is the Ridgeway?"
"Seventeen miles."
"Which direction?"
"North, naturally. North again from that you see Devizes, the
vale of Pewsey, and the other downs. Also towards Bath. It is
something of a view. You ought to get on the Ridgeway."
"I shouldn't have time for that."
"Or Beacon Hill. Or let's do Stonehenge."
"If it's fine, I suggest the Rings."
"It will be fine." Then he murmured the names of villages.
"I wish you could live here," said Rickie kindly. "I believe you
love these particular acres more than the whole world."
Stephen replied that this was not the case: he was only used to
them. He wished they were driving out, instead of waiting for the
Cadchurch train.
They had advanced into Salisbury, and the cathedral, a public
building, was grey against a tender sky. Rickie suggested that,
while waiting for the train, they should visit it. He spoke of
the incomparable north porch.
"I've never been inside it, and I never will. Sorry to shock you,
Rickie, but I must tell you plainly. I'm an atheist. I don't
believe in anything."
"I do," said Rickie.
"When a man dies, it's as if he's never been," he asserted. The
train drew up in Salisbury station. Here a little incident took
place which caused them to alter their plans.
They found outside the station a trap driven by a small boy, who
had come in from Cadford to fetch some wire-netting. "That'll do
us," said Stephen, and called to the boy, "If I pay your
railway-ticket back, and if I give you sixpence as well, will you
let us drive back in the trap?" The boy said no. "It will be all
right," said Rickie. "I am Mrs. Failing's nephew." The boy shook
his head. "And you know Mr. Wonham?" The boy couldn't say he
didn't. "Then what's your objection? Why? What is it? Why not?"
But Stephen leant against the time-tables and spoke of other
matters.
Presently the boy said, "Did you say you'd pay my railway-ticket
back, Mr. Wonham?"
"Yes," said a bystander. "Didn't you hear him?"
"I heard him right enough."
Now Stephen laid his hand on the splash-board, saying, "What I
want, though, is this trap here of yours, see, to drive in back
myself;" and as he spoke the bystander followed him in canon,
"What he wants, though, is that there trap of yours, see, to
drive hisself back in."
"I've no objection," said the boy, as if deeply offended. For a
time he sat motionless, and then got down, remarking, "I won't
rob you of your sixpence."
"Silly little fool," snapped Rickie, as they drove through the
town.
Stephen looked surprised. "What's wrong with the boy? He had to
think it over. No one had asked him to do such a thing before.
Next time he'd let us have the trap quick enough."
"Not if he had driven in for a cabbage instead of wire-netting."
"He never would drive in for a cabbage."
Rickie shuffled his feet. But his irritation passed. He saw that
the little incident had been a quiet challenge to the
civilization that he had known. "Organize." "Systematize." "Fill
up every moment," "Induce esprit de corps." He reviewed the
watchwords of the last two years, and found that they ignored
personal contest, personal truces, personal love. By following
them Sawston School had lost its quiet usefulness and become a
frothy sea, wherein plunged Dunwood House, that unnecessary ship.
Humbled, he turned to Stephen and said, "No, you're right.
Nothing is wrong with the boy. He was honestly thinking it out."
But Stephen had forgotten the incident, or else he was not
inclined to talk about it. His assertive fit was over.
The direct road from Salisbury to Cadover is extremely dull. The
city--which God intended to keep by the river; did she not move
there, being thirsty, in the reign of William Rufus?--the city
had strayed out of her own plain, climbed up her slopes, and
tumbled over them in ugly cataracts of brick. The cataracts are
still short, and doubtless they meet or create some commercial
need. But instead of looking towards the cathedral, as all the
city should, they look outwards at a pagan entrenchment, as the
city should not. They neglect the poise of the earth, and the
sentiments she has decreed. They are the modern spirit.
Through them the road descends into an unobtrusive country where,
nevertheless, the power of the earth grows stronger. Streams do
divide. Distances do still exist. It is easier to know the men in
your valley than those who live in the next, across a waste of
down. It is easier to know men well. The country is not paradise,
and can show the vices that grieve a good man everywhere. But
there is room in it, and leisure.
"I suppose," said Rickie as the twilight fell, "this kind of
thing is going on all over England." Perhaps he meant that towns
are after all excrescences, grey fluxions, where men, hurrying
to find one another, have lost themselves. But he got no
response, and expected none. Turning round in his seat, he
watched the winter sun slide out of a quiet sky. The horizon was
primrose, and the earth against it gave momentary hints of
purple. All faded: no pageant would conclude the gracious day,
and when he turned eastward the night was already established.
"Those verlands--" said Stephen, scarcely above his breath.
"What are verlands?"
He pointed at the dusk, and said, "Our name for a kind of field."
Then he drove his whip into its socket,and seemed to swallow
something. Rickie, straining his eyes for verlands, could only
see a tumbling wilderness of brown.
"Are there many local words?"
"There have been."
"I suppose they die out."
The conversation turned curiously. In the tone of one who
replies, he said, "I expect that some time or other I shall
marry."
"I expect you will," said Rickie, and wondered a little why the
reply seemed not abrupt. "Would we see the Rings in the daytime
from here?"
"(We do see them.) But Mrs. Failing once said no decent woman
would have me."
"Did you agree to that?"
"Drive a little, will you?"
The horse went slowly forward into the wilderness, that turned
from brown to black. Then a luminous glimmer surrounded them, and
the air grew cooler: the road was descending between parapets of
chalk.
"But, Rickie, mightn't I find a girl--naturally not refined--and
be happy with her in my own way? I would tell her straight I was
nothing much--faithful, of course, but that she should never have
all my thoughts. Out of no disrespect to her, but because all
one's thoughts can't belong to any single person."
While he spoke even the road vanished, and invisible water came
gurgling through the wheel-spokes. The horse had chosen the ford.
"You can't own people. At least a fellow can't. It may be
different for a poet. (Let the horse drink.) And I want to marry
some one, and don't yet know who she is, which a poet again will
tell you is disgusting. Does it disgust you? Being nothing much,
surely I'd better go gently. For it's something rather outside
that makes one marry, if you follow me: not exactly oneself.
(Don't hurry the horse.) We want to marry, and yet--I can't
explain. I fancy I'll go wading: this is our stream."
Romantic love is greater than this. There are men and women--we
know it from history--who have been born into the world for each
other, and for no one else, who have accomplished the longest
journey locked in each other's arms. But romantic love is also
the code of modern morals, and, for this reason, popular. Eternal
union, eternal ownership--these are tempting baits for the
average man. He swallows them, will not confess his mistake,
and--perhaps to cover it--cries "dirty cynic" at such a man as
Stephen.
Rickie watched the black earth unite to the black sky. But the
sky overhead grew clearer, and in it twinkled the Plough and the
central stars. He thought of his brother's future and of his own
past, and of how much truth might lie in that antithesis of
Ansell's: "A man wants to love mankind, a woman wants to love one
man." At all events, he and his wife had illustrated it, and
perhaps the conflict, so tragic in their own case, was elsewhere
the salt of the world. Meanwhile Stephen called from the water
for matches: there was some trick with paper which Mr. Failing
had showed him, and which he would show Rickie now, instead of
talking nonsense. Bending down, he illuminated the dimpled
surface of the ford. "Quite a current." he said, and his face
flickered out in the darkness. "Yes, give me the loose paper,
quick! Crumple it into a ball."
Rickie obeyed, though intent on the transfigured face. He
believed that a new spirit dwelt there, expelling the crudities
of youth. He saw steadier eyes, and the sign of manhood set like
a bar of gold upon steadier lips. Some faces are knit by beauty,
or by intellect, or by a great passion: had Stephen's waited for
the touch of the years?
But they played as boys who continued the nonsense of the railway
carriage. The paper caught fire from the match, and spread into a
rose of flame. "Now gently with me," said Stephen, and they laid
it flowerlike on the stream. Gravel and tremulous weeds leapt
into sight, and then the flower sailed into deep water, and up
leapt the two arches of a bridge. "It'll strike!" they cried;
"no, it won't; it's chosen the left," and one arch became a fairy
tunnel, dropping diamonds. Then it vanished for Rickie; but
Stephen, who knelt in the water, declared that it was still
afloat, far through the arch, burning as if it would burn
forever. _
Read next: PART 3 - WILTSHIRE: CHAPTER 34
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