PART I

THE CUCKOO IS NOT ENCLOSED

THE INN—THE HOUSE

A little boy, David Scott Herries, lay in a huge canopied bed, half
awake and half asleep.

He must be half awake because he knew where he was—he was in the
bedroom of the inn with his sisters, Mary and Deborah; they were in the
bed with him, half clothed like himself, fast sleeping. Mary’s plump
naked arm lay against his cheek, and Deborah’s body was curled into the
hollow of his back and her legs were all confused with his own. He liked
that because he loved, nay, worshipped, his sister Deborah.

He knew also that he was awake because, lying looking up, he could see
the canopy that ran round the top of the bed. It was a dull faded green
with a gold thread in it. He could see the room too, very large, with
rough mottled white walls and a big open stone fireplace; there was a
roaring, leaping fire—the only light in the room—and he could see very
clearly the big, shining brass fire-dogs with grinning mouths like
dragons and stout curly tails.

He knew, too, that he was awake, because he could see Alice Press
sitting there, her clothes gathered up to her knees, warming her legs.
He did not like Alice Press, but she always fascinated him, and he
wondered now of what she was thinking, so motionless, her head with its
red hair pushed forward, her naked neck above her silver brocade.

He knew that he was awake, because he could hear the sounds of the inn,
voices calling, doors banging in the wind, steps on the stair, and even
the snap-snap of horses’ hoofs on the cobbles of the yard. He could hear
the wind too, rushing up to the windows and shaking the panes and
tearing away again, and then he shivered, pleasantly, luxuriously,
because it was so warm and safe where he was and so cold and dangerous
outside.

Then he shivered again because he remembered that he, with the others,
must soon plunge out again into that same wind and mud and danger.

He would like to stay thus, in this warm bed, for ever and ever.

But, although he was awake enough to know all these things, he must be
asleep also—asleep because, for one thing, the room would not stay
still, but leapt and rollicked with the fire. All the things in it
moved; the fire-dogs grinned and yawned; over a large arm-chair of faded
red silk, oddly enough, some harness had been slung, and it lay there in
coils of silver and dark brown leather, and these coils turned and
stretched and slipped like snakes. Then against the wall there was a
long, thin mirror in tarnished silver and, in this, Alice Press was most
oddly reflected, the side of her face that was shown there being very
thin and red, her hair tawny-peaked like a witch’s hat; her eyebrow
jumped up and down in a terrifying manner.

Only David was not afraid. He was a very fearless boy. But he thought,
as he lay there and watched, how ugly she was in the mirror, and that if
his father saw her thus he would not chuck her beneath the chin and so
make his mother unhappy. And, although he was not afraid, he was glad
nevertheless that Mary’s warm arm was against his cheek and the round
shape of Deborah’s body against his back.

Because it might be that after all Alice Press was a witch. (He had
always had his secret suspicions.) The way that she sat there now, so
motionless, bending forward, was just as though she were making
spells—and the silver harness blinked and the glass of the mirror
trembled as the flame of the fire rose and fell again.

Then, again, it must be that he was still asleep because, although he
knew that he was lying in his bed, he knew also that he was yet bumping
and tossing in the coach. In that coach they had surely been for weeks
and weeks, or so at least it had seemed to his tired and weary body.

At first when they had set out from Doncaster—how long ago?—he had
been all pride and pleasure. It had been a fair and lovely morning—one
of the last of the late summer days. The sun was shining, the birds
singing, such gay bustle about the cobbled courtyard of the inn, the
maids looking down from the windows, the hostlers busy about the horses,
the postilions polite and eager to his father, all of them, Mother and
Father Roche and Alice Press and Mary and Deborah fitting so comfortably
into the soft warm inside of the coach, that had even pictures of
hunting painted on the walls and little windows with gold round the
edges.

Yes, it had been all gay enough then, but how miserable it had soon
become! He could not now divide the days and nights from one another:
moreover, he was still there in the coach, bumped up and down, thrown
here and there, sleeping, waking with cramp and pins and needles, and
Deborah crying and needing comforting, and Mary cross, and his mother
frightened, and Alice Press sulky. Only Father Roche, reading in his
purple book, or looking steadily in front of him, never perturbed nor
upset nor unhappy, always grave and kind, and miles and miles away from
them all!

Then the Great North Road, which had sounded so fine and grand when he
had first heard of it, how different it was in reality! Not fine and
grand at all, but full of deep ruts and mud so fearful that again and
again the coach was hopelessly stuck in it, and everyone had to pull and
push, cursing and swearing. Once they were almost upset. The coach went
right over on its side and the horses went down, and they were all on
the top one of another. He, David, had a bruise on his right leg, and
his mother’s cheek was cut.

The further they went the colder it became. They seemed, almost at once,
to leave summer right behind them.

Nor were the inns where they stopped fine and clean like the Doncaster
one, but cold, draughty, and the floors and walls often crawling with
spiders and other more evil things.

He seemed, lying there in the bed watching the leaping fire, to be
transferred suddenly back into one of the worst of them—where, tired
and bruised with the rough travelling, he had stumbled into the
low-ceilinged, ill-lighted, ill-smelling room, huddled with his mother
and sisters at a dirty table in a dim corner, and there stared out into
the rude, confused babble—men, women, children, dogs, drinking,
shouting and singing, the dogs waiting, mouths agape, while the food was
tossed to them, four men playing at some game in a corner, a man with a
fiddle and a monkey dressed in a crimson jacket dancing in the middle of
the sandy floor, the heated damp of the room rising to the ceiling and
trickling in wet smeary streaks down the walls, a smell of straw and
human breath and dung and animals and tallow—and in the middle of this
his father standing, in his dark purple riding-coat, his high hat
cocked, his waistcoat of silver thread showing between the thick lapels
of his coat, his whip with the silver head in his hand—like a god, like
a king, demanding a private room, aweing at last the fat landlord, round
like a tub, causing all that coarse roomful to feel that a great man had
come among them. There was little, tired though he was, that David had
not that night noticed, from the painting of the King over the fireplace
to a swinging gilt cage with a blue bird, and a man who said he was from
the wars and crept to their table on his wooden stumps showing that his
right hand had no fingers. . . .

Yes, he remembered everything of that night (was not the man with no
legs and no fingers over there now by the fire watching Alice Press, her
back of stiff brocade?), because on that night a great happiness had
come to him. He had slept with his father. His father and Father Roche
and himself had slept in the one small, dirty room, all three on the
low, dirty bed. At first it had been almost terrible because his father
had been in one of his rages, cursing the place and the dirt and the
cold, cursing his family, too, for persuading him to the expense and
danger of a private coach, when they would all of them have been so much
better on horseback.

Then, seeing his little son straight and sturdy there in his
smallclothes, looking up and waiting for orders as to whether he should
go naked to bed or no, with one of his sudden gestures he had caught him
up and hugged him, then thrown off only his outer clothing, then taken
David and wrapped him, close up against himself, in his great
riding-coat—and the two of them stretched out on the bed, Father Roche
bodily beside them but spiritually a world away.

How wonderful that night had been! David had slept but little of it. He
had lain close against his father’s heart, his hands across his father’s
breast, feeling the great beat of the heart and the iron ribs beneath
the thin shirt, his cheek against the smooth softness of his father’s
neck.

That had been a great happiness, but after that night there had been
only trouble. On the high ground towards Kendal they had suffered a
fearful storm of wind and rain. It had seemed to them that the end of
the world had come; the coach had sunk into the mud so that for hours
they could not move it. They had been warned, at the last town, that
they must beware of footpads, and at every sound they had started. Quite
a crowd of travellers had been accompanying them for safety—farmers,
pedlars and other pedestrians. The weather perhaps had saved them. All
the footpads were within doors, warm and cosy beside their fires.

In Kendal they had left the coach and had ridden the remainder of their
journey on horseback. David, tired though he was, had found that
glorious, riding in front of his father, mounting the hills, then
dropping under the faint misted morning sun down beside the miraculous
waters and mountains, a land of faery such as David had never dreamt of,
sheets of white and silver, the mountains of rose and amber and the
trees thick with leaves of gold.

They had ridden into Keswick in the afternoon, quite a cavalcade of
them, with their possessions on pack-horses, the women and children so
desperately fatigued that they could scarcely keep their seats. So, in a
dream, to the inn, and the children stripped of their outer clothing and
flung into the great bed, the two little girls at once dropping off into
heavy slumber.

So should David have done, but instead he had lain there in this strange
state of waking sleep. It was, possibly, that he was too greatly
excited. For months past, in their home outside Doncaster, he had been
anticipating this journey. He had not been happy in the Doncaster home.
His father had been so much away, his mother so unhappy, there had been
no one save his sisters with whom he could play. He had hated the stuffy
little house, the rooms so small and dark, the country surrounding it so
dull and uninteresting. And always there had been this unhappiness, his
father angry and rebellious, his mother often in tears, Alice Press,
whom he hated, supposedly looking after the children but doing nothing
for them, gentlemen arriving from Doncaster, drinking, playing cards,
singing and shouting all night long. His only interest had been his
lesson with Father Roche, who, while teaching him Latin and Greek, would
talk to him about many wonderful things, about London with its palaces
and theatres and gardens that ran down to the river, and Rome where
England’s rightful King lived, and then of God and Heaven, and how one
must live to please God—to obey Father Roche in all things and to keep
secret in his heart everything that Father Roche told him.

The only other entertainment had been the times when he was with
Nathaniel and Benjamin, the men-servants. Nathaniel taught him the
small-sword and cudgel, and Benjamin taught him to box and to wrestle,
and he had been twice with Nathaniel to a cock-fight and once to the
village to see a bear baited.

Nevertheless, had it not been for his father and Deborah the days would
have been heavy indeed. He was a boy of passionate affections and his
whole heart was given to his father and his sister. His love for his
father was worship and his love for Deborah was protection.

His father was entirely a being from another world like St. Michael or
St. George who came in the Christmas plays. His father who was so
handsome and splendid could do no wrong, although when he was drunk he
was hard to understand; when he beat Benjamin until the blood ran down
Benjamin’s back David was sorry for the man, but yet was certain that
his father was in the right.

But Deborah was of his own flesh and blood. So, too, was Mary, but he
did not care for Mary. She, although she was so young, had already her
own independent fashion of living and, because she was so pretty, could
have her way when she pleased, which she very well knew. But Deborah was
not pretty and was often afraid. Deborah believed that David could do
anything, and she always came to him when she was in trouble and trusted
him to help her. He could do no wrong in Deborah’s eyes, and so he loved
her and guarded her as well as he could from every harm.

At the thought of Deborah he turned a little and put his arm about her,
which she feeling, although deep in sleep, recognised by a little dreamy
murmur of pleasure.

Just then he heard the door (which was behind the canopied bed so that
he could not see it) open, and an instant later it was all that he could
do to withhold a cry of pleasure. For it was his father who had entered,
who was now standing quite close to them, looking down upon them. David
closed his eyes—not because he wanted to be deceitful, but because he
knew that his father wished that he should be asleep.

Nevertheless, one look had been enough. His father was resplendent! For
days and nights now he had seen him soiled and disarrayed with the
storms and struggles of that awful journey, muddied and blown and
uncaring whether he were neatly kept or no. There were times when his
father seemed to prefer dirt and disorder, and they were bad times too.
An unkempt wig, tarnished buckles and buttons, a soiled cravat, and
David had learnt to know that the disarray and rebellion were more than
physical.

Only an hour ago David had seen him striding about the courtyard of the
inn, mud-splashed to the thighs, raging and swearing. That had been his
last thought before he had fallen into this half-slumber, that his
father was still out there in the wind and rain ordering Benjamin and
the rest, seeing to the horses that were to carry them the final stage
of their weary journey. But now, how resplendent in the white-walled
fire-leaping room! David in that one glance had seen it all.

The fine curled chestnut wig, the beautiful claret-coloured,
gold-embroidered coat with the long spreading skirts, the
claret-coloured breeches and grey silk stockings, the fluted grey-silk
waistcoat stamped with red roses, the little sword at his side—ah!
glory upon glory, was anything in the world anywhere so glorious as his
father thus! No, nothing in London or Rome of which Father Roche had
told him—nothing that China or India itself could show!

His heart swelling with pride and happiness he lay there, pretending to
be asleep, watching through half-closed eyes. He saw then an odd thing.
He saw his father, on tip-toe, approach the fire, steal upon Alice
Press, she motionless gazing into the flame, lean forward, put then his
hands, deep in their splendid white ruffles, lightly about her face,
closely across her eyes. She gave a little scream, but David knew that
at once she was aware who this was.

Laughing, Francis Herries withdrew his hands. She looked up, smiling
that strange smile of hers, half pleasure, half rebellious anger.

‘Why, sir’ (she was, like David, greatly surprised at his grandeur),
‘what fine feathers we’re wearing!’

‘Hush,’ he put his fingers to his lips, ‘the children are sleeping.’

‘I fancy so. They sound still enough. Poor babies—after such a devilish
journey!’ She turned again from him and stared back into the fire. ‘You
are dressed to meet your brother?’

‘Why not to meet yourself, beautiful lady?’

He was laughing, that careless, jolly, kindly, good-to-all-the-world
laugh that, as David knew, came only when he was happy. So he was happy
now! David was glad.

‘Myself?’ She turned to him fully, showing the deep swell of her bosom
beneath the brocaded vest. ‘No, I think not. God! that I had not
consented to come on this madcap journey.’

For answer he bent down and, still laughing, caught her head in his
hands, brought his mouth to hers, kissed her on the lips, the cheeks,
the eyes, then, almost violently, flung her away from him, straightening
his body as he did so.

‘Do you like that better? Does that make you more content with your
journey?’

‘No, why should it?’ She shrugged her shoulders, turning back to the
fire. ‘Do you love me? No. Then what is a kiss?’

‘Love—and love.’ He laughed. ‘I am no captive to it, if that’s your
meaning. I visit it, wish it good day, spend a pretty hour in its
company—so I am never weary of it nor it of me. Love? And what do you
mean by love?’

‘I mean,’ she answered fiercely, ‘those foul, filthy, beggarly days and
nights of mud and dung and stinking beds; the pains and bruises that I
have known on this journey and the idiocies of your wife and the
wailings of your children and the evil dirty tempers of yourself. . . .
And what do I receive in return for these things?’

She rose up suddenly and turned to him—a tall broad woman, with scarlet
hair and a white face, who would soon be stout.

David, watching her, had never seen her like this, so alive, her big
eyes with the fair, faint eyebrows staring, the big bosom under the
silver brocade heaving, the big mouth in the pale face half open.

Francis Herries looked at her gently, kindly and with amusement. ‘What
do you get?’ speaking low so that the children should not be waked. He
put a hand on her shoulder, and she stood strong and sturdy without
moving. David could see her full face now in the mirror and he watched
absorbed because it was so awake. Always it had been yawning, the lazy
eyes half closed, the cheeks heavy with indolence as she sleepily ate
sugar-plums and cakes and sugar figs.

‘What do you get? . . . Something. Nothing. And what is there to get? A
little hugging and fumbling, sweating and panting, and then satiety.’ He
looked at her even with more earnest study, as though in truth he had
never seen her before, and her eyes did not fall before his. ‘You
elected to come—to the end of the world. No roads. Savages. A chill
house with the rain always falling—and the ghosts of all your sins, my
dear.’

She, with a sudden movement that surprised him, caught him round the
cheek and with her white face against his ruddy brown one whispered
eagerly, furiously in his ear. The fire leapt as though in sympathy with
her urgency, and the figures swayed and swelled in the silver mirror.

Francis Herries withdrew from her slowly, carefully, as though he would
not hurt her, no, neither her body nor her soul. But he was many, many
miles away from her as he answered:

‘So that’s the way of it. . . . To leave them in the mud and rain and
find sunshine, the two of us, alone—alone.’ He smiled—a beautiful
smile, David, who did not understand the most of this strange
conversation, thought. ‘Alone with me, Alice, you’d be in despair in a
half-hour. No one has been alone with me ever and not suffered the
intensest weariness. I have suffered it with myself, recurring agonies
of it. And you are not made to be wearied.

‘Nevertheless, you will be infinitely dull. Days of rain and mud in a
half-tumbled house cut off from everything but the savages. It’s your
own choice, my dear. And only my body to comfort you. My body without my
soul, I fear. My soul has flown. I lost it a week back. I shall find it
doubtless on a tree in Borrowdale.’

David saw that she did not understand him, that she gazed at him with a
look that he himself did not understand, a look of rage, of love, of
uncertainty, of disappointment. She was not very clever, Alice Press.
Young though he was, David already had an instinct of that.

His father came softly to the bed and looked down on them. David, his
eyes tightly closed, could nevertheless see him, the gold of his coat,
the white silk of the lapels, the curling splendour of the chestnut wig.
It was as though his father were weaving a spell over him—his eyes so
fixedly closed that they burnt. A spell, a spell! The crystal in the
silver mirror turning, Alice Press mounting her broomstick and riding
through the dark heavy-hung sky, and his father riding on a silver horse
into the moon and stars. . . . A spell! A spell!

‘Wake up! wake up!’

It was Alice Press’s soft white hand shaking his shoulder. He opened his
eyes. His father was gone as though he had never been. They were to be
up and have their clothes on and see their good uncle and aunt—Uncle
Pomfret and Aunt Jannice.

The two little girls, like little round fluffy owls bewildered by their
sleep, dazed with the strange light of the leaping fire, fastened their
own clothes. Mary was eight years of age, and Deborah seven, and they
had been taught from a long time to do for themselves. They had been
wearing their winter dresses these last days, and Mary’s had dark fur
edging the green velvet and Deborah’s grey fur upon crimson. David was
dressed in a short yellow jacket and long tight breeches, buff-colour,
reaching down to his ankles. He tied Deborah’s ribbons and points and
fastened her shoes. She was very frightened. She was scarcely as yet
awake. She did not know what this great room was nor where they were now
going. She was terrified of her Uncle Pomfret and Aunt Jannice. She was
weary, utterly weary after the days of the journey. She wanted her
mother. She, like David, hated Alice Press. She was like a little downy
bird, her head covered with soft flaxen curls. She stood there biting
her lips so that she would not cry. Had David not been there she _must_
have cried. But she stood near him looking up into his face. Where David
was no harm could come.

It was now time for them to go down, but they had to delay because Mary
must have her horn-book to carry with her. It was a fine one, and its
back was of gilded and embossed leather, crimson with silver wire. David
knew at once why Mary must have it. It was to show off before Aunt
Jannice that she might notice how exceptional a child Mary was.

They searched here and there. Mary had had it with her before she fell
asleep. Alice Press swore and threatened. It was of no use. Mary had a
marvellous obstinacy when the purpose was concerned with herself. The
horn-book was found beneath one of the fire-dogs, and Mary walked out,
holding it virtuously by the handle, her head up as though she were
leading a procession.

They went down the wooden staircase, which was from Elizabeth’s time,
very beautiful and broad, the newels thick and strong, the hand-rails
framed into the newels, the balustrade beautifully arcaded, a lovely
symmetry of delicacy and strength. In the hall below it was very dark,
save in the doorway that looked out into the street where the light of
the afternoon still gleamed in pale shadow against black cloud. Great
gusts of the gale blew into the hall, at the end of which was a huge
stone fireplace with a roaring fire. On broad tables candelabra held
many candles that also blew in the wind.

Across the shining floor servants, drawers, maids, men from the kitchen
were constantly passing into the wild light and out of it again.
Uncertain though the light was, it was enough for David to see his
father, standing very stiff and upright, his mother also, and a lady and
gentleman who must, David knew, be his uncle and aunt.

The children were brought up to their parents. Mary at once went to her
mother, caught her mother’s hand, and so stayed, looking very pretty.
David kissed his aunt’s hand, bowed to his uncle, then stood straight
and stiff beside his father. His uncle Pomfret was a big, broad, stout
man with a very red face, large wide-open eyes and a little snub nose.
He was dressed in rough country clothes, his long boots were splashed
with mud. He smelt strongly of wind, rain, liquor and the stables. He
seemed good-natured and friendly, laughed much and struck his leg often
with a riding-whip. Aunt Jannice was thin and tall, with a peaked face
and a big brown wart in the middle of her cheek. She wore a broad hat
and had a curly brown wig which sat oddly about her yellow leathern
face. She was very composed, dignified and superior. She contrasted
strangely with David’s mother, who was always so stout and red and
flustered and was given to breaking into odd little hummings of tunes
from simple nervousness.

David knew that there was nothing that irritated his father so much as
this habit of hers. But David’s attention was fixed upon his father. He
wished desperately—although he did not know why he wished—that his
father had not dressed so grandly. Only half an hour before he had been
so proud of his father’s grandeur, now he was ashamed of it.

He was sure that Uncle Pomfret and Aunt Jannice were laughing at his
father for being in such grand clothes. Not that his father would care,
but he, David, cared for him. Uncle Pomfret was much older than his
father (he was indeed twenty-two years older; he was the eldest, as
Francis Herries was the youngest, he fifty-two years of age and Francis
only thirty). He looked as though he might be David’s grandfather.

There was indeed no physical resemblance between the two brothers. David
discovered also another thing—that they were all striving to persuade
his father of something, and his father was very obstinate. He knew how
his father looked when he was obstinate, he smiled and was haughty and
said little. So it was now.

They were trying to persuade him to stay in his brother’s house at least
to-night and not to go on in the wind and wet and darkness into
Borrowdale. But his father only smiled. He had planned to be in the
house to-night and be in the house he would, and the others should be
there too.

David saw that his mother was very near to tears, her round mottled face
all puckered, and she bit continually at her lace handkerchief. She was
desperately weary, poor woman, and afraid and very unhappy.

‘Why, blast you and damn you, brother,’ said Uncle Pomfret very
heartily. ‘You must stay with us to-night or prove yourself most
unbrotherly. We had always expected it so—Had we not, Janny? There’s no
road over to Herries. You are going among the savages there, brother. I
can swear you were dismayed enough at seeing this griddling little inn
after your great Doncaster houses, but this is Paradise to what you’re
going to. Don’t say I didn’t warn you now. Damn me for a curmudgeon,
brother, if I bottomed you into doing it—but to-night you shall stay
with us. There’s your lady sunk with weariness, and the babes too, damn
me if they’re not.’

He shouted all this as though across a windy common, and all that
Francis Herries said to it was:

‘Herries sees us all to-night, and we’ll take our luck with the road.’

‘You’ll be the rest of this day on horseback,’ his brother assured him.
‘There’s not a cart in Borrowdale, brother, nor a road to carry one.
It’s all horseback round here. Damn it, you’re in Chiney in Borrowdale,
but never say I didn’t warn you. You wanted cheap living and you’ve got
it. Naked bottom and bare soil! that’s life in Borrowdale.’

David had never heard so rough and coarse and hearty a voice, and it
seemed to him strange that this big red man should be his father’s
brother. He jumped, too, from the sharp contrast when a moment later his
aunt spoke:

‘Come now, Francis. Have some softness for the family. The children can
scarce stand with their weariness. Margaret, persuade him. There is room
enough with us for so long as you please to remain.’

Her voice was cold and thin like the steady trickle of a determined
pump. When she spoke, she stared in front of her, looking neither to
right nor left, as though she were reciting a set piece.

David’s mother, thus appealed to, very nervously and not looking at her
husband, answered:

‘Indeed, it’s very kindly of you, Jannice. We are weary and ’tis late.
To-morrow would be time enough.’

‘There, brother!’ Sir Pomfret broke in with a roar, ‘have you no tender
parts? Your wife and the children at least shall stay with us. You shall
ride alone if you are resolved—you and the priest,’ he added, suddenly
dropping his voice.

‘There—that’s sufficient,’ Francis Herries answered sharply. ‘My wife
will be thankful enough when she’s there and settled. In an hour’s time
the horses will be moving and ourselves on them. Thank you for your
goodwill, brother. And now for a meal. It is ready and waiting.’

It was now late for dining. To the children, indeed, it would, before
this tremendous journey of theirs, have seemed an incredible hour, for
their dinner had been at three of the afternoon ever since they could
remember, but now all their customs and habits were in ruin, and they
accepted, poor things, blindly and without a murmur what came to them.

They were, however, all three, too tired to have an appetite. In the
little private room they were crowded about the small table. David to
his distress was next to his uncle, who roared and rattled and laughed
as he helped the food, so that it was like being seated next an
earthquake.

There was a good baked pie of a leg of mutton, and roasted chickens with
pease and bacon, and a fine fruit tart that would, at another time, have
made David’s mouth water. There was much wine, too, and of this Uncle
Pomfret began to drink very heartily indeed, and shouted to the others
to do the same. The noisier he became the more upright and magnificent
was Aunt Jannice.

Very fine, especially, was she when she rose to wash her spoon in a bowl
of water behind the table, so that, having just used it for pease and
bacon, it should not now be soiled for the fruit tart. David’s mother,
who had never seen anyone do this before, could not hide her staring
wonder.

David, in spite of his weariness which made everything around him like a
dream, fancied that his aunt was storing all things up in her mind, so
that for many weeks she would be able to retail to her genteel friends
all the strange things that this wild family had done. He did not love
her the better for fancying this.

But he was in so dreamy a state that he could be sure of nothing. He, in
his half-dream, saw—and he knew that his mother saw this too—that his
father was drinking in a defiance of his stout red-faced brother. He
knew what his father was like when he was drunken, and he hated his
uncle that he should tempt him. Throughout this journey his father had
been very fine, drinking nothing, aware perhaps of the charge there was
upon him. And in any case he drank little when Father Roche was there.

But in everything that he did, while his brother was present, there was
defiance. There had been defiance in his grand clothes, defiance in his
refusing to stay in Keswick, defiance now in every gesture. David,
because he adored his father, knew all this with a wisdom beyond his
years. Meanwhile, in this dreamy state, it was all that he could do with
his wits to defend himself against his uncle, who was pushing pieces of
meat and of pie on to his plate and even holding his head back and
poking food into his mouth. But once when he was about to force some
wine down his throat Francis Herries called out quietly:

‘Nay, brother, leave the boy alone. He shall have wine when he wishes
for it. It shan’t be thrust on him.’ Pomfret broke out into a flurry of
magnificent and filthy oaths. He then thrust David in the ribs and cried
at him: ‘Why, damn thee, boy, dost thou not follow thy father? He’s a
lecherous foul-dealing knave enough, I’ll be bound—no Herries, an he
ain’t. Drink thy uncle’s health, boy, and be damned to thy father!’

‘Pomfret!’ said Aunt Jannice. It was enough. The uncle was cowed like a
dog under a whip and took some sugar-plums from a plate and swallowed
them, three at a time, like a confused child. David looked across to his
father. It seemed to him then, as it was to seem to him increasingly in
the coming days, that they were younger and elder brother, not father
and son. And, indeed, there was only the difference of nineteen years
between them.

In his dreamy state it seemed to him that he and his father were circled
round with light together, they two, and that his father’s crimson and
gold shone, and the room burnt against its panelling with a strange and
sombre glow.

But his next thought was for Deborah. With every attention that his
uncle had permitted him he had watched her and had seen that she was
very unhappy. Poor child, with weariness and fear of her relations and
her seated distance from David, she was nearly distraught. She did not
understand what had happened to her, but it was something terrible. She
understood that more terrible things were shortly to occur. David,
watching her, could at last endure it no longer; her frightened eyes,
the way that her head bobbed and nodded and then bobbed again, her
fashion of pretending to eat and not eating, hurt him as though it were
himself.

While his uncle was busy with a long and excited account of his country
sports and pastimes, with vociferous curses on the French and praise of
the Hanoverian succession, he stepped from his chair and went to her
side, bending forward and whispering to her.

But, alas, this kind attention was too much for her; she broke into
sobs, not loudly but with a soft titter-witter like a wounded bird.

Uncle Pomfret broke off his account of what he would do to a French
Papist an he caught him, to tumble into a bellow of laughter.

‘Why, pox on it, here’s a little master . . . comforting your
sister. . . . Why, damn it, boy, but I like your heart. There’s a good
one for the ladies. He knows a thing or two, I warrant. But come hither,
little Deb. Come to thy old uncle. He’ll buy thee a baby, one of your
china sorts with pink cheeks, none of your stuffed rags. Come to thy
uncle, Deb, and he’ll comfort thee.’

‘David.’ It was his father’s voice. ‘Leave Deborah. Come to me.’ He went
up to his father, fearless, but not knowing whether a caress or a blow
was to be his fate. Then he looked into his father’s eyes and saw that
they were soft and humorous and knew that all was well.

‘Go, find Benjamin. We must shortly be starting.’ Then, turning to his
brother, ‘She has babies enough, Pomfret; she is weary, and there’s a
bed at Herries waiting for her.’

He did not hear his uncle’s retort, which was something fine and free
about beds and ladies and general courtship. He was glad to be away, he
didn’t care if he never saw his uncle or aunt again; he hated them and
Keswick and the inn. But coming into the bustle of the kitchen where
serving-men and maids were shouting and pushing, where dogs were waiting
for chance pieces of food, and a man with a feather in his broad hat was
seated on the corner of a table playing a fiddle, the stir and adventure
of it all heartened him and he was glad that he was alive and pushing,
shoving forward into this grand new world. The kitchen smelt of
everything in the world—meat and drink and the heat of the great fire.
He looked around him and found Benjamin seated in a corner near the
fire, his arm round a girl. She was feeding him with pieces of meat off
his plate.

‘Benjamin,’ he said, ordering him as though he were a hundred years his
master, ‘my father says that it’s time for the horses.’

Many of them heard him and turned laughing, and a big woman with an
enormous bosom would have made him come to her, and a brawler wanted him
to drink, but he fixed his eyes on the stout Benjamin, who put his plate
down, gave the girl a kiss, and came without a word. So much power had
Francis Herries over his servants.

Benjamin was plump and rosy; he should have been a fine figure of a man,
but he could eat all day without ceasing. This was one of the reasons
that he was beaten by his master, but he bore his master no grudge.
Everything that came his way he took, and over the bad he shrugged his
shoulders and over the good he laughed and grunted.

First of all he loved himself, then food, then women (all kinds, young,
old, ugly and fair—there was not the ugliest woman in the country who
was too ugly for him, and with his round, rosy cheeks, merry eyes, broad
shoulders and stout legs he could do what he would), then cock-fighting,
dog-fighting, football, bear-baiting, rat-hunting, witch-hunting, all
kinds of sport (he was himself not a bad sportsman with the staff and
cudgel, and boxing and running and swimming), then every kind of a
horse, then young David, for whom he cared, perhaps, more than for any
other single human being, but not for him very deeply, only lazily and
with easy good-nature. He was from the South, and had, as yet, no good
word for this northern country.

He grumbled as they made their way into the dusky yard. ‘Pox on it,’ he
said, ‘I’ll pepper my own legs with shot, but I thought his honour would
give us another hour’s quiet and plenty. What’s he want riding on
to-night for? There’s but few like the master for a restless
spirit. . . . I’d match that white dog in the kitchen there,’ he went on
irrelevantly, ‘for a hundred guineas against the grey bitch the master
had in Doncaster. There’s a dog. You could see he never blinked a bird
in his life. And you needn’t tell master I was kissing Jenny neither!
They all say their name’s Jenny——’

‘I shall not tell him,’ said David proudly.

‘How many miles is it from this Borrowdale to Keswick?’ asked Benjamin.

‘Around seven, I fancy,’ said David.

Benjamin nodded his head but said nothing. ‘It’s a little inn as you
might say, this,’ he remarked. ‘Small beside the south-country inns. Not
much business in this little town. Kendal’s the way the business runs.
Not but there won’t be some sport in Borrowdale. I may be a poor man and
not bred for writing and accounts, but I know a dog when I see one.’

David missed many more of his remarks. For one thing Benjamin was always
talking, not like the other man Nathaniel, who was a little spare
fellow, very silent and grim, and anyone who was often with Nathaniel
must accustom himself to think his own thoughts while Benjamin
chattered. Besides this, David again was in his dream state. As he stood
in the yard listening to the horses striking the cobbles, hearing the
curses of the hostlers, smelling the hay and straw, catching the sharp
cold of the breeze about his face, he seemed to move, not on his own
feet, but through the air, alighting here and there and then up again,
softly, breezily like the wind.

Thus dreaming he found himself standing with the others at the inn door.
Father Roche was there, and Alice Press, his father, mother, uncle,
aunt, and his sisters—all dreamy and wavering together. A crowd had
collected to watch their departure. A great wind was hurrying through
the sky above the black gables and chimneys, carrying soft grey clouds
with it, and between the clouds once and again a burning star stared and
vanished. The horses were stamping and pulling at the heads. Everything
was ready for this last ride.

In the doorway stood the stout host of the inn, bowing as Francis
Herries very grandly thanked him for his courtesy. Uncle Pomfret laughed
and shouted. Then, as it seemed, a moment later one of life’s great
happinesses had occurred, for David was sitting a horse in front of his
father. He had expected that he would be in front of Nathaniel, because
all the way from Kendal he had been with his father, and surely such
luck would not come to him twice. But here he was pressed against his
father’s body, and he could feel the movement of his thighs and above
his head the throb of his heart, and in his face the wind was beating
like a whip.

They were off, trotting over the cobbles, the horse slipping now and
then in the mud or refuse, his father stiffening as he pulled at the
reins, and at their side seen dimly his mother, pillion behind Father
Roche with Mary in her lap, Alice Press with Deborah pillion behind
Benjamin, the rest duskily in the rear.

The little town was very still; a light glimmered here and there through
a shutter, a watchman going from his warm room, perhaps, to his
night-duty passed them swinging his lamp, a chair in which a lady highly
muffled could just be seen went swiftly with its bearers round the
corner. They turned out of the square to the left, and the clatter that
they made as they swept round the corner drew some heads to the window
and an aproned man with a candle in his hand to the doorway. Then as
they began to clear the town another thing occurred. David was aware
that certain figures were running at their side and a man on a little
nag was keeping pace with them. The same thing had happened to them on
their way to Kendal, when a number of farmers and others had gone with
their coach. That had been because of footpads, and now this must be for
the same reason.

That made his heart beat faster. They were passing out of the guarded
town and were running into dangerous country, dangerous country that,
although he did not know it, was to be his country for many a year. He
had perhaps some sense of it there under the biting wind, for he
shivered a little and drew closer to his father.

They pulled up a little hill and were aware now at once of the open
country, for the road beneath them was treacherous. The horses began to
walk, and even so they slipped and stumbled in the mud. In the centre
the path (it was little more than a path) was hard and well-trodden but
on either side a quagmire. There was a faint silver misty light in the
sky, but this shifted and trembled with the driving clouds. On the left
of them there were thick trees, but on the right the landscape sloped to
the mere, and in front of them were black shadows that waited like
watchers for their coming, and these, David knew, were the mountains. He
was aware then of a further thing, that his father was drunk. Not
bestially drunk. Not ferociously drunk. Happily drunk. His body closed a
little about his son as he sang softly the children’s game:

‘Lady Queen Anne who sits in her stand,
And a pair of green gloves upon her hand,
As white as a lily, as fair as a swan,
The fairest lady in a’ the land.
Come smell my lily, come smell my rose,
Which of my maidens do you choose?
I choose you one, and I choose you all,
And I pray, Miss Jenny, yield up the ball.
The ball is mine and none of yours.
Go to the woods and gather flowers;
Cats and kittens hide within;
But all young ladies walk out and in.’

David knew the words very well, because, although this was a girls’
game, he had played it to please his sisters. His father repeated again:

‘And I pray, Miss Jenny, yield up the ball—And I pray, Miss Jenny,
yield up the ball.’

Why had he chosen the name Jenny? Was not that the name by which
Benjamin had called the kitchenmaid? Did they, as Benjamin had said,
always cry Jenny for a name? His father swayed slightly as he sang, but
the horse seemed to understand. In any case they were going slow enough.
No harm could come. A little man trotting at their side called up to
them:

‘I have a fiddle with me, your honour, and will play to you by your
fire.’

And Francis Herries answered him happily: ‘I’ll swear you have a fiddle
and know how to play on it too.’ Then he began to talk very pleasantly
to his young son. The path now was bending down until it almost touched
the mere, and David could hear the little waves, driven by the wind,
slapping the shore and rippling away again into space.

All his life he was to remember that moment; the clap of the horses’
hoofs on the path, the slap and ripple of the water, the little panting
breaths of the man running beside them, the warmth and intimacy of his
father’s body, the dark woods above them, the black hills in front of
them, the fiercely moving sky, and the gentle good-humoured voice in his
ear.

‘And so, David, we are passing into the perilous country where the
savages live, where there is only hay to eat and dirty water to drink,
where it rains for a hundred days. Dost thou think there will be bears
there, David, my son?’

‘I don’t know, father. I hope so,’ said David.

‘Bears of one family or another there will be, and snakes in the grass
and peacocks on the garden wall. Is it not as though we were escaping?
Escaping from what, think you?’

‘We are not escaping,’ answered David proudly. His voice came in little
jolts. They were now on harder ground and were moving more swiftly. ‘You
would never run away.’

‘No, would I not? Art thou so sure, little son? I have run from the
lions in my time and then again I have braved them. But this is the most
perilous adventure of all. We will not come from this save with our
naked skins; and if I am hard pressed will you always stay by me,
David?’

‘Always,’ said David, nodding his head. ‘I could never be frightened an
you were there.’

‘Couldst thou not, couldst thou not, my son? Although the she-devil with
the silver hams and the glassy tongue came to down us both?’

‘I’m afeared of no woman,’ David answered, but the trees now were
gathering about him very darkly, and it was cold. In spite of himself he
shivered a little.

His father laughed, bent forward and touched ever so lightly with his
lips the boy’s neck.

‘So we are together, side by side, whatever the peril—for ever?’

David straightened his back. ‘Yes, sir,’ he answered proudly.

‘’Twas a maid in the inn said her name was Jenny when I kissed her,’ his
father said, ‘though she’s no maid any more. Not by my doing, I had no
time to test her virtue. Eh, little son?’

David understood this only vaguely. ‘I don’t like women,’ he said.

‘Not your sister Deborah?’ His father laughed softly, deeply, as though
he were thinking of other things.

‘I love Deborah,’ David answered.

‘And your Aunt Jannice?’

But David did not reply. He could not. He was fast asleep, leaning back
against his father’s breast.

He woke again with a start to see that all the horses were at a
standstill and were gathered about a small stone bridge. At that same
moment, as though it had been arranged, a round moon, cherry-coloured,
broke out from shadowy banks of cloud.

She stared down at them, and at once, as it seemed in his sleepy
half-wakened state to David, the clouds fled away; she sailed gloriously
in the sky of shining light scattered with stars. The world around them
was like a world seen through glass, pale and unreal, with the trees and
hills of ebony sharpness. A hamlet was clustered beyond the bridge and
the river, which was running full and throwing up, under the moon,
little white waves alive and dancing.

After a consultation they moved on upwards over a little hill with hills
on their left side and the flooded gleaming river on their right. It was
all very quiet and still. The storm had altogether died away. No one
spoke, and the only sound was the hoofs of the horses, now soft, now
sharp. The scene was now to David, who had only all his life seen flat
and shallow country, incredibly wonderful.

They were passing through a gateway of high rock into a little valley,
still as a man’s hand and bleached under the moon, but guarded by a ring
of mountains that seemed to David gigantic. The moonlight made them
larger and marked the shadows and lines of rock like bands of jagged
iron. In colour they were black against the soft lighted sky and the
myriads of silver stars. A little wind, not sharp and cold as it had
been before, but gentle and mild, whispered across the valley.

As they advanced, the only live things in all the world, it seemed that
in a moment someone must break the strange moonlit silence with a cry:
‘Ahoy! ahoy! who comes to meet us?’

But not even an owl hooted from the listening trees. After a while one
mountain detached himself from the skies, coming towards them—large,
sprawling, very dark and solid, with a ragged edge. To the left of this
mountain there was a straight thin ledge like a tight-rope, and on the
right a very beautiful cluster of hills, in shape like the grouped
petals of an opening flower.

Then quite suddenly they stopped. ‘That is the house on the left of us,’
someone said. It was the first voice for half an hour, and the hills
seemed to repeat: ‘Yes, that is the house.’ The horses trotted over
soft, rather boggy, grass, up a little hill, through a thick group of
trees, and at once they were all outside a rough stone wall that guarded
a ragged, grass-grown courtyard. David looked at the house and was sadly
disappointed. Under the black hills it seemed so very small, and in the
white moonlight so cold and desolate. It appeared to be two houses: on
the right it was high, with a gabled roof and thin latticed windows;
then it dropped suddenly to a low rough-seeming building with shaggy
farm byres at its hinder end. He noticed, especially, the windows of the
higher house, because there were two little attic windows like eyebrows,
and he could see, because the moonlight made everything so clear, that
the door of this house had handsome carving. But the other building was
low and shabby and forsaken.

While they waited at the gate three dogs came out furiously barking, and
directly they were followed by a broad thick-set man, walking clumsily,
who hurried down to meet them.

Then a light was in the doorway, but still the house watched, cold,
desolate, under the moon, with no greeting for them.

‘So—we are home,’ he heard his father murmur.

Then he felt himself picked up in his father’s strong arms, lifted, then
carried across the courtyard.

His father set him down, and he ran over the threshold of the doorway.
The hall where he stood was flooded with moonlight, and opposite him
were two shining suits of armour. People were moving and talking behind
him, but he did not hear them.

He was first in the house. As he stood there in the moonlight he, who
had been asleep so long, was suddenly awake.

And he made his compact with the house.

THE MOUNTAIN

Charles Francis Herries woke when the light of the fine new day was
throwing silver shadows across the misty fields. Pushing back the
creaking diamond-paned window, standing there in his purple bed-gown he
looked down on the courtyard, the thick clustered yews that guarded, as
though with fingers on their lips, the house, the ragged stone wall,
then, beyond, the river, the thatched roofs of the nearest yeoman’s
farm, the fields and the dark sombre hills.

He drew a deep breath, flung off the bed-gown and stood there naked. He
did not feel the cold, nor the sharp crisped air; he was at that time
impervious to all physical pain and discomfort, a magnificent creature
in all bodily force and feeling. He stared out, then looked back into
the little, thin, low-ceilinged room. It was furnished scarcely at
all—only a narrow truckle-bed on which he and his son had been
sleeping—David, his flushed cheek against his arm, still lay there
soaked in sleep—a big carved chest with the date 1652 roughly cut upon
it, a mirror on the chest, and against the farther wall some old green
tapestry (very faded) that flapped and rustled now in the breeze from
the open window. There was one high-backed and clumsy chair, and into
this his clothes had been carelessly flung. David’s little things,
carefully folded, were on the top of the chest.

He felt his body, punching it here and there, pinching it, kicking out a
leg, stretching an arm. He might have been proud that he was so handsome
and in such splendid health—such marvellous health indeed, considering
the life that for ten years now he had led. But he was scornful of that
as he was of everything else. What good had his beauty, health, strength
brought him? Not so much good as that silver moon setting now in a pale
rosy sky beyond the latticed window.

He stood there, the breeze blowing on his bare back and thighs, looking
down on his little son. Here, too, he was scornful. His young son loved
him, but would he love him as the years passed and he grew to realise
his father? Would there not develop in him that same withdrawal that
seemed to come to every human creature after a short contact with
him—yes, even to so poor a thing as Alice Press, who was already
beginning to look at him with that strange, surmising glance? David at
present trusted and adored him, and in the centre of Herries’ universal
scorn, scorn of himself, of all human beings, of the round world and all
that moved in it, there stayed this pleasure and pride that his young
son so thought of him. That he could neither deny nor reject. But for
how long was it to remain? Would he take any steps to retain it? He knew
himself too well to fancy that he would.

He turned again to look out of the window on to the scene that was to be
his now, he was determined, for evermore. Whatever came of this step
that he had taken, whatever misery, ruin, disgrace, he would hold by it.
It was final. Only thirty years of age, he yet seemed to see far, far
into the future, and something told him that at the very last these dark
hills would encircle him.

The hill that chiefly his window faced seemed especially to tell him
this. The houses of this time in this country were not built that their
tenants might look out on beautiful views, but rather for safety and
shelter, tucked tight in under the hill, guarded by heavy yews.

Beyond the fields, in far distance, this humped, lumpish hill,
Glaramara, sprawled in the early morning light. Herries knew well its
name. For so long as he could remember he had known precisely how this
house must stand, and all its history. In 1565, the year following the
founding of the Company of Mines Royal, Sir Francis Herries, his
great-great-grandfather, had come from his house Seddon, north of
Carlisle, in part charge of the ‘Almaynes,’ the foreign miners, and
built him a little house here, called it Herries, and, at last, liking
it and the country, had lived in it altogether, giving up Seddon to his
younger brother.

In all his young days at Seddon, Francis had heard of Herries, the
strange house in the strange country, shut in under the mountains behind
rocky barriers, cut off from all the world. His grandfather, Robert
Herries, had tried for a while to live in it, but it had been too
isolated for him. That, too, his father Matthew had found, and had moved
back to Seddon, and after this the old house had been held by a yeoman,
Satterthwaite, farm-buildings had been added to it, and much of the
older house had been allowed to fall into ruin.

When Francis’ elder brother, Pomfret, had made a fortune in speculation
(this largely by chance, because Pomfret was no brilliant financier) he
had built him his house in Keswick, caring nothing for Herries, which,
although so near to him, seemed yet at the very world’s end.

Satterthwaite, a clever yeoman above the abilities of his fellows, had
done well for himself, and built a farm-house over towards Threlkeld. It
was then, after some years of desolate neglect, that Herries had been
suggested to Francis by his brother, and, driven both by his romantic
love for the notion of it and by his own desperate circumstances, he had
accepted with an eagerness that had amazed the unimaginative Pomfret.
Yes, an eagerness that was amazing even to himself. What was it that had
driven him? That part of him that loved to be alone, that loved to brood
and dream and enfold about him, ever closer and closer, his melancholy
and dark superstition and defiant hatred of the world. That part of him,
too, that felt, as neither Pomfret nor Harcourt, his brothers, felt, his
passionate pride in his family. Why that pride? God only knew. There was
no reason for it. The Herries men had never done great deeds nor
supplied to the world famous figures. For hundreds of years they had
been drunken, robbing Border freebooters; only, in Elizabeth’s time, his
great-great-grandfather, Francis, having some good fortune at the Court,
had pushed up a little the family fortunes. That Francis had been a
hard-headed fellow, a flatterer, a time-server, a sycophant, but not
ungenerous if he got his way, and no fool at any time. Elizabeth had a
fancy for him, would have kept him with her, and was none so well
pleased when, quite eagerly, he accepted the opportunity of surveying
the foreign miners who were sent to Keswick.

Something hurried him thither, that odd strain that was for ever
cropping up in every Herries generation, the strain of the dreamer, the
romanticist, the sigher for what was not, the rebel against facts; and
in that old Elizabethan Herries this romantic dreaming went ill enough
with hardness, his pushing ambitions, his desire for wealth.

Between the two stools of temperament he fell to the ground, as many
another Herries had done before him. This land in Borrowdale caught his
fancy; he stayed on and on there, losing at length his interest in the
mines, mooning, a dirty unlaced old man, behind the rocks that bounded
that valley, keeping company with the yeomen, pursuing their daughters,
drinking, riding, dicing—dying at last in his old tumble-down house, a
little soiled rat of a man with ale dribbling at his ragged beard.

That was great-great-grandfather Herries. The place had done something
to him, and Francis Herries, gazing now out of his window, thought it an
odd fancy that this same sprawling hill, Glaramara, had looked across
into that old man’s eyes, seeing them grow ever more bleary, more dim,
more obstinately sodden.

And so it might be with him! He had come even as that old man had come,
in the vigour of his prime and strength, and he had in him those same
things—that longing for what was not, dream of Paradise round the
corner, belief in a life that could never be. And in him also, riding
him full strength, were lechery and drunkenness, lasciviousness and
cruelty.

As he stood there, idly gazing, he had a passionate family feeling. Not
for individuals. He hated Pomfret, despised Harcourt, cared nothing for
his cousins, the children of his uncle Robert, who lived London way, nor
for his other two cousins, Humphrey and Maurice Cards and their
children, Dorothy, Jeremy, and Henry. Humphrey Cards, a man a good deal
the elder of Francis, lived now at Seddon and was said to be a
tight-lipped Quaker. Francis had never seen the Cards brothers; they
inhabited London when he, as a boy, lived at Seddon, but Pomfret knew
them and despised them both.

No, there was not one of the family for whom Francis cared a rap,
neither agricultural Pomfret and his yellow-faced wife, nor bachelor
Harcourt, there on the edge of that dirty sea-coast at Ravenglass, nor
the purse-proud Kensington children of Uncle Robert with their family
coach and fine Queen Anne house and garden, nor Humphrey at Seddon, nor
ship-owning Maurice (his eyes, they said, so deeply stuck into his
business that he could see nothing else) down at Portsmouth—not for a
single one of them had he a warm feeling or a kindly thought—they were
all rogues and fools together—and yet here he was, new-come to this
tumbled old ruin, gazing out on a couple of shabby hills and some
grass-greasy fields, and his heart was swelling at the thought of
Herries and of the Herries men and women before them, the Scotch and
English blood that had gone to the making of them, the English soil that
had seen the breeding of them.

He felt suddenly the cold, and with a shiver pulled to the window and
took on his bed-gown again.

There was a pump in the yard behind the house—he could hear the handle
going; he would go and soak his head under it. He pulled on a pair of
breeches, thrust his feet into some slippers, and then softly, lest he
should wake his son, stole out.

The morning was deepening now, but the small heavily paned windows let
in little light.

The part of the old house that remained had not been ill designed, the
rooms lofty and the staircase wide enough for two to go abreast, still
something of a wonder in Queen Anne’s day and exceedingly unaccustomed
in Elizabeth’s.

This old house was of two floors, a most unusual thing in that country,
the court-room, the dining-hall, the withdrawing-room leading one from
the other. Out of the court-room a stair led to a loft that held the
three bedrooms, two very small (in one of them he had slept last night
with David, in the other Alice Press with the two little girls), and the
other larger, containing a grand bed, and in this his wife was still
sleeping; Father Roche had a small room below.

On the ground floor there was the entrance-hall and the kitchen, and on
to the kitchen abutted the farm-buildings rented by Satterthwaite. These
were a diminutive example of the yeoman’s dwelling. This building was
slated, the ridge made of what were known as ‘wrestlers,’ slates notched
so as to interlock. The rest was primitive enough, the upper floor open
to the oaken beams, an oak partition portioning off the sleeping-place
for master and mistress.

Below was the house-place, the parlour and the kitchen. A man and his
wife called Wilson had been caring for the house ever since the Herries
family had forsaken it.

Coming down the rickety stair from the loft in the dim light, Francis
Herries could see at once that their care had been neither vigilant nor
arduous.

He stood in the dining-hall and looked about him. In that dim air
without a sound in the world it seemed forlorn and desolate enough.

At the withdrawing-room end there was a raised dais, and at the
court-room end, opposite the dais, some high oak screens, intricately
carved.

Along one wall hung a fine spread of tapestry, fresh and living still,
worked in colours of red, brown, amber, dark purple, its subject a
hunting-scene, so handsomely wrought that all the wall seemed alive with
straining hounds and noble horses, huntsmen winding their horns, and for
their background dark hills and clustering trees.

This was a fine piece, and Herries, looking at it, wondered that it
should be so well preserved. For the rest the hall was furnished
barely—one long oak table, some stiff-backed chairs, a carved chest,
and a portrait hanging above the dais.

It was this portrait that drew now Herries’ attention. In the dim light
it seemed marvellously alive. He did not question but that it was the
portrait of old great-great-grandfather Herries himself. It had been
undoubtedly painted after his coming to Herries, possibly by some
wandering artist who had strayed into these wilds or by some London
friend passing through Kendal on his way to Scotland—whoever had
executed it, he was, in that wavering light, alive and dominating. An
old man, his face wrinkled and seamed, his head poked forward out of
some dark furs, his eyes dimmed, half closed, and one thin hand
stretching forward out of the picture, as though to seize some prize or
arrest some attention.

What Francis Herries felt, looking at it, was that there was here an odd
resemblance to himself. Was it in the eyes? How could that be when his
own were so bright and eager? Or the mouth? But this mouth was puffed
and seemed as you looked at it to tremble. Or the skinny neck between
the furs? Or the grasping hand? He looked at it, nodded his head as
though the sight of it had decided some problem for him, and passed on
down the stairs, through the shabby little entrance-hall into the open.

Behind the house he found an old-fashioned pump, and leaning against the
wall, scratching his head and yawning, was Benjamin.

By the side of the pump was a wooden bucket. He signed to Benjamin to
come and help him, stripped (this was the blind side of the house, and
in any case he did not care who might see him). Benjamin splashed him.
The water was ice-cold. He pulled on his breeches again, bid Benjamin
rub his chest and back. He was in a splendid glow.

Over the low wall he could see the lights of the sky clustering about
Glaramara’s shoulders. Long swaths of yellow lay across the pale ivory,
and the edge of the hills rippled with fire. A bird sang, a little
uncertainly, from the yews, and in the fresh stillness other birds could
be heard beating their way through the shining air.

Benjamin, his mouth open, stared at his master, waiting for orders.

‘Strip, you devil,’ Francis Herries said, laughing. ‘You are sodden with
sleep.’ Benjamin stripped at once, and his plump, stout body began to
shiver and quake as the cold air caught his flesh. Francis laughed, then
filled the bucket and splashed the water over the man, who did not,
however, flinch, but stood there, shaking, but at attention.

‘I will repay your courtesy,’ Francis said, and seizing him, rubbed his
naked body with a ferocious vigour. Then, giving him a kick with his
soft slippers, cuffed him on the cheek and bid him put on his clothes.

‘How does this place seem to you, Benjamin?’

Benjamin, pulling up his breeches, answered:

‘We shall come to a handsome knowledge of one another’s customs, hidden
here from the world—but ’tis a good place for horses.’

Francis Herries looked about him. ‘I haven’t seen so clear a water nor
smelt so fresh an air for years. But you can leave me when you will.
I’ll have no man stay who’s a grumbler.’

‘If I would leave you, master,’ Benjamin answered with that odd,
half-sulky, half-humorous speech that was so especially his, ‘I’d have
left you long ago. There’s been often reason enough.’

‘Why do you stay then?’ asked Herries.

Benjamin, rubbing his wet head, answered: ‘I can’t tell. There’s no
reason for why I do things.’ He paused, then added: ‘Where you are,
master, there’s food and dogs and horses. Day come, day go, life is the
same anywhere in the world, I fancy.’

‘And when I beat you?’

‘All men are beaten,’ answered Benjamin, shuffling inside his clothes.
‘I’d sooner be beaten by you than another.’ He added, looking about him
at the hills as though he were seeing them for the first time—‘The
fellow in the house tells me there’s fine bull-baiting, wrestling and
other games round these parts. Life’s not over for us yet, master,’ and,
as he shuffled off with his fat walloping walk he grinned at Herries,
showing himself half servant, half friend; half hireling, to be kicked,
beaten, abused; half equal, knowing secrets and sharing confidences that
must breed equal contact.

As he turned to go back into the house Herries saw, looking at him from
the corner of the house-wall, an old, bent, infinitely aged woman. She
had long, white, ragged hair, and a thin, yellow face. She stood without
moving, looking at him.

‘Who’s that?’ he asked Benjamin.

‘The house-man’s mother.’

The old woman raised her hand as though to feel the wind, then
disappeared.

He went into the house to see his wife. The bedroom was dark. He pulled
back the curtains and then stood by the window looking across at her.
That was a fine bed in which she was lying, the curtains of faded
crimson velvet, the woodwork splendidly carved. Crimson velvet, torn and
shabby, was tacked also on to some of the panelling of the walls. There
was a portrait of a young lady in a green dress and a white ruff over
the fireplace.

His wife was yet sleeping. He came to the bed and stood there watching.
There was something pathetic in poor Margaret Herries as she lay there,
happy for a while at least in dreamless slumber. All the anxieties, woes
and bewildered distresses that attacked, so increasingly, her waking
life were for the moment stilled.

She looked a fool as she slept. She was a fool, she would always be one,
but there was something gentle, kindly, appealing in her stout
characterless features. And it might be that there was more character
there than anyone, herself most certainly, at this time knew.

Maybe Herries, as he looked at her, felt something of this. Drawing his
purple gown closely around him, he gazed at her, lost in his own
disappointed ironical thoughts.

Why in folly’s name had he ever married her? They had been young enough,
he eighteen, she seventeen. They had been idiots enough, he vain beyond
all vanity, she adoring beyond all conceivable adoration; she had been
pretty, innocent and wealthy. Her father, Ephraim Harden, a very
successful City merchant, had died a year before their meeting, her
mother being already long-time dead. She was an only child and sent to
an aunt in Carlisle on a holiday. They had met at a Carlisle ball, he
handsome, without a penny, loathing the dull life at Seddon, where he
hung on because he had no means wherewith to live in any other more
lively place.

Seddon was still his brother Pomfret’s at that time, and Francis and his
brother Harcourt were permitted to remain there on a kind of tolerating
sufferance. How he had hated that place with its dull grey walls, its
poverty and greasy indolence. You might say that this place, Herries, to
which he had now come was dull and grey enough, but, from the first
moment seen on that moonlit night, he had thrilled to it. It had
touched, and he knew this absolutely, some deep fundamental chord in
him.

But Seddon and brother Harcourt! Harcourt with his thin, shanky frame,
peering eyes and most exasperating cough, his passionate absorption in
his books, so that he was only happy when they were piled high around
him, sending up their dusty thick smell on every side of him. Harcourt
who, in his twenties, had been a gay spark in London, an acquaintance of
Swift and Addison and Steele, who had helped in the exposure of the
great Psalmanazar, been present at the trial of John Tutchin, and even
spent an evening with the infamous Mrs. Manley of the _New Atalantis_!

But as Harcourt had grown, his zeal for letters had grown with him; he
had abandoned the town, buried himself in Seddon with his books, and
then, at Francis’ marriage, taken himself to the sea-coast, near
Ravenglass, where he lived, a contented hermit.

It had not been altogether Francis’ desire for money that had driven him
into marriage with Margaret Harden. His motives were never unmixed in
anything that he did, always there was nobility with his greed,
tenderness with his cruelty, humour with his pessimism. He cared for her
prettiness and innocence. He might have had her without the marriage
ceremony, her body and her money too, she adoring him so that from the
first moment she could deny him nothing, and he did not.

Nor was it only his weariness with Seddon. From the first he had
realised that it was likely that Margaret Harden would weary him more
than ever Seddon had done. He had felt a tenderness (which he might now
allow was principally a weak sentiment) for this lonely orphaned girl,
tied, until some man should carry her away, to the strings of a dumpy,
frowzy aunt whose only interest was in cards and the scandals of the
country town.

He had been stung to the venture also by the sharp pleasures of rivalry.
The neighbouring squires, the sparks of the little town, even some of
the graver, more aged officers of the garrison, had seen in Miss
Harden’s pretty face and splendid fortune an exciting prize. But from
the first moment of Francis Herries’ appearance there had been no chance
for any other. He had been for her, poor silly fool, the god of all her
dreams and maiden longings.

Yes, she had been cheated as vilely as he—nay, in the issue of it, much
more vilely. She was no judge of men, poor thing, and had thought him as
noble in character as he was handsome in person. The aunt, tired swiftly
of the burden of this innocent girl for whom cards were too intricate a
pleasure and scandal too distressing a pastime, was delighted to have
her off her hands.

Herries had, indeed, considered the thing at some surprising length for
a boy so young, but even at that age he had no illusions about himself,
knew himself very well for what he was. But he wanted the money, her
face pleased him, he had a certain kindness for her, and so the thing
had been.

Looking down at her now he could not believe that, so short a while
back, she had been that pretty, slender girl. Marriage had at least
agreed so far with her that, in the very first year, she had begun to
thicken. The three children that had come to her (the only happiness the
poor lady had known) had not assisted her beauty; you could not believe
that now she was but twenty-nine years of age.

And he would swear that all their quarrels and distress had not been his
fault alone. She had never tried at all to grow to his taste and wishes;
she had developed in nothing during the twelve years of their life
together. She had no curiosity, no inquisitiveness, no sensitiveness, no
humour—only sentiment, a liking for good food, a weak indulgence of the
children and an infinite capacity for tears. Unfortunately all his
ill-temper, his infidelities, his squandering of her fortune had not
caused her to love him less; rather she adored him more to-day than when
she had married him. Even this last insult, of carrying Alice Press to
this place with them, had not stirred her resentment.

It was that above all that irked him. Although he had tried again and
again to kill it, he had deep shame at his treatment of her—a shame
that never drove him to better behaviour, but that for ever irritated
and vexed him. Had she abused him, sworn at him, there would have been
some reason for him to despise himself less, but this submission to his
unkindness made him, when he was conscious of it, hate her for his
reproach of himself.

Not one of his mistresses had ever been anything to him, and Alice Press
the least of all. He had taken them in a kind of impatient scorn of
their eagerness. What did it matter, one thing more or less, since all
had gone so ill?

She was stirring. She raised her arm, let it fall again, sighed in her
half-sleep, sighed again and woke. Seeing him, she gave a little cry. He
must have looked wild enough standing there in the half-light, his
shaven head with its short, bristling hairs, his chest showing bare
through the lapels of the bed-gown.

‘Francis!’ she said, and smiled that trusting, half-deprecating,
appealing smile that he so thoroughly detested.

‘It is a fair morning,’ he answered, ‘and time you were about.’

‘I know.’ She raised herself, putting her hand modestly over her
breasts. ‘I was dreaming. I dreamt that my aunt Hattie was here again
and her dog Pompey, and that she was giving it chocolate.’

‘Thank God,’ he answered grimly, ‘that the reality is more gracious. You
are at Herries, and the cesspool below this window is in full odour, and
there is a witch in the house.’

‘A witch?’ she cried, alarmed. She was crammed with superstitions, old
wives’ tales of warlocks and broomsticks, prophecies and magic spells.

‘A witch. I saw her but now alight on her broomstick, scratch a flea
from her ear and whisper with her familiar hedgehog.’

Margaret Herries smiled that nervous smile with which she always greeted
his pleasantries, not knowing whether he were in jest or earnest;
whichever way her conclusion went she was always wrong.

Now she thought that he was jesting and tittered. Also she was but half
awake and could not see his face clearly in the half-light. He came
nearer to the bed and bent over her. He was moved by one of those sudden
and to himself most exasperating impulses of compassion.

‘You had best stay where you are,’ he said. ‘The last week has been
exhausting enough for a hide-bound alligator.’ He smiled, sat down on
the high bed’s edge and touched her hand.

‘Lie here, and the woman shall bring you some food.’

Margaret was awake enough now. Any kindness from this adored husband set
her heart wildly beating, her cheeks flushing, her tongue dry in her
mouth.

‘If you think it wise——’ she stammered. She had a desperate impulse to
press his hand, even to put her arm up, pull his head towards her and
embrace him, but she knew by bitter experience how dangerous those
actions would be. Her hand lay pulsing in his.

‘Margaret,’ he said, ‘if you find that I have done you wrong to bring
you here, if you cannot endure the remoteness of the place and the
savagery of the inhabitants, you must go for intervals of every year to
some town. York is not so far—even Scotland. There is Carlisle . . .’
He broke off, remembering certain old scenes in Carlisle.

‘And you shall take the children with you. Only you shall not keep David
too long. I have done wrong to bring you to this forsaken country.’

The flush yet on her cheeks, she answered:

‘Whilst you care to have me here, Francis, I care to stay.’

It was the most aggravating thing that she could have said. It called up
in its train a thousand stupidities, placidities, nervousnesses, follies
that had, in their time, driven him crazy with irritation. Never a mind
of her own, always this maddening acquiescence and sentimental fear of
him.

He drew his hand away.

‘The rocks that hem us in are not more implacable than your amiability,
my dear. I remember that your aunt, prophesying (how truly!) our wedded
bliss, said that you had a nature, mild, trustful and clinging. With
what knowledge of human character she spoke! Cards and the frailties of
her neighbours yielded her human wisdom. Then you shall not go—you
shall stay and love and cherish your husband, caring nothing for the
odour of the cesspool, the machinations of the household witch, the
rustic brutalities of the neighbouring yeomen! I will see that some food
comes to you.’

He got up from the bed with that abrupt, impatient movement that she
knew so well. She recognised, poor lady, that she had already lost her
momentary advantage, how she could not tell.

She looked at him, loving his every feature, then said:

‘Yes, Francis, I thank you.’

She was an exasperating woman. As he went from her room he felt that he
did not care how unhappy she might be in this desolation to which she
had come. She might make friends with the pigs for all that he cared,
and good luck to her. And she was but twenty-nine and growing fatter
with every hour! Was ever man so cursed?

* * * * *

And yet once again, as, later in the day, he rode out on his black
horse, Mameluke, he was affected by his compassion. He had escaped them
all; he had not stayed for the meal which now that it was past three
o’clock would soon be on the table. He must be alone and facing his own
strange thoughts.

At first, as Mameluke trotted quietly along the rough path, he did not
notice the country round him. He saw for a while nothing but himself and
he saw himself in a mirror, his features caricatured by the distorting
glass, his body lengthened to a hideous leanness, his forehead peaked to
a white cone-shaped dome. Well, thus he was—and thus. This sudden
quiet, this hush of the fields and sharp, refreshing coldness of the air
seemed to bring the issue of the situation before him in sharper form
than it had taken for many months.

The issue was this—that unlike all the men and women that he knew, the
squires and boon-companions of Doncaster, the women, loose and
otherwise—alone of them all he longed for something that he could not
touch. He had a vision, a vision that took, when he was with Father
Roche, a religious shape, when he was with Alice Press a fleshly, with
little David a pride in family, with the beauty of landscape and fine
stuffs and rare pieces a poetic, but all these only forms and vestures
of a vision that was none of them, but of which thing all were. And with
this vision there was the actuality of his life—his life wasteful,
idle, cruel, sensual, selfish, vain. He did not, as he rode now on
Mameluke, turn his head away from a single aspect of it.

He had once dreamed a dream. It was some five years back at the end of a
race-meeting in Doncaster. He had stayed in an inn in the town for the
night. Drinking heavily, he was yet not drunk as were his companions. He
had shared a room with one of them, pulled his boots off him, flung him
down on his bed, where he lay loathsomely snoring. Himself he had gone
to the window, pushed it open and stared out on a splendid night flaming
with stars.

And there, it had seemed, propped forward on a little chair, his head
almost through the window (so that he might easily have tumbled on to
the cobbles below), he had fallen asleep. Had he slept or no? How many
times since then he had asked himself that question! In any case,
through his dream he had seemed to hear the sounds of the night. The
slow, lazy call of the watchman, the love duet of cats, the rumbling of
a country cart on distant cobbles, the snores of his neighbour, these
had been behind and through his dream.

His eyes open, he would have sworn, staring into the stars he had beheld
a vision. He was in a region of vast, peaked, icy mountains. Their
fierce and lonely purity, as silver-pointed they broke the dark sky,
caused him to cry out with wonder. The sky was dark; the mountains
glittering white, they ringed round a small mere or tarn, black as steel
in shadow.

There was absolute silence in this world. Then as he looked he saw a
great white horse, glorious beyond any ever beheld by man, come, tossing
his great white mane, to the edge of the mere. He hesitated, lifting his
noble head as though listening, then plunged in. He swam superbly,
tossing his mane, and Francis could see silver drops glistening in the
icy air. He swam to the farther edge; and then Francis was seized with
an agonising terror lest he should not be able to climb, out of the
mere, up the icy sides of the cliff that ran sheer into the water. That
moment of suspense was fearful and compounded of a great love for the
splendid horse, a great tenderness, a great reverence and an anguish of
apprehension.

Then, tossing his mane once more, the beautiful horse mounted out of the
mere, strode superbly across the ice and vanished. Then, again, there
was great loneliness.

Waking from this dream and staring back at the little room, stuffy and
smelling of drink, the floor tumbled with clothes, his thick,
open-mouthed, red-faced companion, he knew an instant of acute, terrible
disappointment. For a moment he thought that he would throw himself out,
end everything, so as to kill the disappointment; and perhaps it would
have been as well had he done so, because, since then, that
disappointment had been always with him.

The more that he had hated the noise and filth and confusion of his life
in Doncaster, the more he had plunged into it. Now, as he slowly passed
along the darkening path that was leading him gradually into the shadow
of the hills, he saw one incident after another of the Doncaster life,
stretching out their hands to him as though they were figures that kept
pace with him. The foolish duel with young Soltery, a quarrel about
nothing when they were both drunk, Soltery who was terrified, and then
more terrified yet that he should seem terrified. He saw young Soltery’s
eyes now, as they faced one another in the early morning light on the
fields outside Doncaster, eyes of a frightened, bewildered child—and he
had shot away one of young Soltery’s ears, so that he would be
disfigured for life.

Or fat Maitchison the surgeon with his brilliance, his obscenity, his
odd beliefs in magic and other humbug—that foolish night in
Maitchison’s rooms when they had defied the Devil, smashed the mirror,
stripped Maitchison’s mistress naked and painted her yellow. He could
see now the room, furniture overturned, the glass of the big mirror
scattered over the floor, and fat Maitchison with gusts of drunken
laughter painting the naked back of the swearing girl. . . . And the
sudden opening of the door, the breeze blowing in from the street, the
candles going out, and someone crying that bats were hanging on the
ceiling. . . .

Yes, the races, the cock-fights, the bull and bear baiting, the
debauchery and smells and noise—a roaring in his ears, a stink at his
nostrils, and always in his heart this longing for the icy peaks of his
dream, the black tarn, the splendid horse with the snow-white mane.

He was young, and should do something with his talents. That he was
talented he knew. They all told him so. He had infinite courage,
splendid physique, an interest and curiosity in many things. What should
it be? Which way should he go? And meanwhile the years slipped by, and
now, obeying some mad, mysterious impulse, he had cut himself right off,
hidden himself among the savages.

Was he to laze here, slouching about, making familiars of the yeomen,
riding with them, chaffing their wives, perhaps seducing their
daughters?

For what had he come here? He only knew that already the place was
working into his veins—the silence, the air with an off-scent of ice in
it, the hills that were perhaps only little hills and yet had so strong
a power—witchcraft hills, hiding in their corners and wrinkles magic
and spells. As he rode on, the outside world was beginning to slip ever
farther and farther away from him. His was the only figure in the
landscape; the whole country, as the afternoon shadows lengthened,
seemed naked. Above the clustered group of mountains at the end of the
valley a little minaret of pale grey clouds was forming, one cloud
stealing upon another as though with some quiet purpose; a purple shadow
fell over these hills as though a cloak had been suddenly dropped over
them.

He saw on his right then a group of buildings. His empty world was in a
moment peopled with life. Near him at the fork of the road was a small
crowd gathered about a pedlar who had slung his box off his neck and
rested it on a flat stone. Herries drew nearer and, sitting his horse,
watched quietly.

The scene that had been a moment before wild and haunted was now
absolutely domestic. Three healthy, red-faced girls stood there, their
arms about one another’s necks, laughing and giggling, one stout yeoman,
some farm boys, and a little man, tow-coloured like a wisp of hay, who,
by his drab dress, should be one of those itinerant parsons and
schoolmen who went from house to house in country districts, taking odd
services of a Sunday and teaching the children.

The pedlar was a tall, thin scarecrow of a man, having on his head a
peaked faded purple hat, and round his neck some of the coloured ribbons
that he was for selling. By his speech, which was cultivated, he was no
native, and, indeed, with his sharp nose and bright eyes he seemed a
rascal of unusual intelligence.

The little scene was charming in its peace and security. Some cattle
were being brought across the long field, two dogs at their heels; a
voice calling in rising and falling cadence sounded, as it seemed, from
the hills, and in the foreground there was the sharp humorous note of
the pedlar, the laughter of the girls and young men and, once and again,
the deep Cumbrian accents of the yeoman.

At first they had not noticed Herries, but when one of the girls,
looking up, gave a cry of surprise, they were not disturbed, and after a
glance went on with their private affairs, governed by a certain dignity
and independence of their own.

The pedlar, however, was aware of him although he continued his patter.
He had ‘Fine thread satins both striped and plain, Persia nets,
anterines, silks for scarves and hoods, shalloons, druggets, and some
Scotch plaids.’ On his tray there were some pieces of fine bone lace,
Chinese boxes, necklaces, gold rings set with vermilions, several gold
buttons, and red watch bottles ribbed with gold—or he said it was gold.
And some books. Chap-books and calendars, _Poor Robin_, _The Ladies’
Diary,_ some old sheets of the _London Gazette_, and some bound volumes
of Plays. These things of fashion looked strange in the open fields
before the little country group, who fingered and laughed and fingered
again. The jewellery, indeed, had a false air, but the ribbons and lace
were pretty, and above, Herries must fancy, the purses of the locals.
Herries noticed, too, that the pedlar did not seem too intent upon his
sales or purchases, and that his sharp eyes went everywhere, and
especially to Herries and his horse.

He thought to himself that this would not be the last time that he would
see that pedlar.

The shadows of the hills now covered the valley; the light flashed
palely above Glaramara and then fell. Herries turned his horse towards
home. As he moved away the little tow-haired parson detached himself
from the others and approached him.

His long parson’s coat was green with age, shabby and stained, and his
breeches were tied about the knees with string, his bony fingers purple
with cold, his nose red; but he had about him a very evident dignity. He
bowed, but not subserviently.

‘It has been a fine afternoon,’ he said, keeping pace with Mameluke’s
gentle step.

Herries, impressionable ever to the moment’s atmosphere, his spirit
touched now by some quiet and happiness, answered, as he could when he
so pleased, with charm and courtesy.

‘The day falls quickly in these valleys.’

‘And the light is for ever changing,’ the little clergyman answered with
pleased eagerness. ‘You are newly arrived here, sir?’

‘But yesterday.’

‘I know everyone in this neighbourhood—man, woman and child. You are
the gentleman who has come to Herries by Rosthwaite?’

‘I am,’ answered Herries.

‘There has been much interest in your coming, sir. It will be the wish
of everyone that you will find it pleasant here, and stay with us.’

‘Do you also belong here?’ asked Herries.

‘I do the Lord’s will and go whither He sends me. For some years now I
have taught the children of these villages, assisted at services, done
what the Lord has bidden me.’

‘You are not a native of Cumberland then?’

‘No, sir, I am from the South. I was born in Bideford in Devon. For many
years I was chaplain to the Earl of Petersham.’

‘Why, then, have you come here? It must seem a severe exile to you.’

‘The Lord spoke to me in a dream and ordered me to go North. I was to
walk forward until I saw a naked man tied to a tree, and in that place
to abide and do His will.’

‘Where saw you your naked man?’

‘After many months, begging and preaching my way through the country, I
came at last to the village of Grange on a summer evening. And above the
river where the bridge is, I saw a man naked and bound with ropes to a
tree. The men of the village were throwing stones at him: he was near
death. He had been caught robbing a yeoman of the place of two hens. I
urged them to release him, the Lord prevailed, and afterward I lodged in
his house. I lodge there yet.’

‘And what, then, do you teach the children?’ asked Herries, entertained
by this simplicity.

‘The Lord’s Word, the Catechism, and, when they wish it, Greek and
Latin.’

‘You have no family?’

‘My wife is with God.’

The dark was falling more swiftly now, and it was difficult to see the
path. Herries jumped off his horse and walked beside the clergyman.

‘What is your name?’ he asked him.

‘Robert Finch.’

‘How shall I like this place? It is cut off from the world.’

There was a sudden odd note of scorn in the little man’s voice as he
answered:

‘It _is_ the world, sir. Here within these hills, in this space of
ground is all the world. I thought while I was with my lord Petersham
that the world was there, but in every village through which I have
passed since then I have found the complete world—all anger and vanity
and covetousness and lust, yes, and all charity and goodness and
sweetness of soul. But most of all, here in this valley, I have found
the whole world. Lives are lived here completely without any thought of
the countries more distant. The mountains close us in. You will find
everything here, sir. God and the Devil both walk on these fields.’

‘And if I believe neither in God nor the Devil?’

‘You are a young man for such confident disbelief. God was speaking to
me now, and has told me that you will find everything that you need for
the growth of your soul here in this valley. You have come to your own
place, sir. You are young and strong, but the day will come when you
will remember my words.’

Herries looked back down the path. In the dusk he could see it point
like a pale, crooked finger straight at the heavy black hump of
Glaramara that was dark against lighter dark. Again he felt ice in the
air and shivered.

‘They are little hills by your foreign sort,’ he said, ‘and yet they
impress.’

The small voice beside him answered:

‘They are the loveliest hills in all God’s world.’ Then it continued,
taking another tone, very mild and a little anxious: ‘You have children
sir?’

‘Three,’ answered Herries.

‘If you were in need——’ he hesitated. ‘My Greek and Latin are good,
and I have authority with children. If I could serve you——’

Herries laughed.

‘I must warn you,’ he said, ‘there is a priest in the house.’

There was a pause while the wind, rising, began to blow fiercely,
swaying the branches and turning the dead leaves about their feet.

The voice began again: ‘He instructs your children?’

‘A little.’

‘Your own religion——?’

‘Nay, I am no Catholic. I have told you I have no religion. How think
you, Mr. Finch? In this drunken, debauched world what is your God
engaged upon? He is busy elsewhere improving some other planet.’

‘Christ died upon the Cross suffering a worse bewilderment.’

Herries laughed again.

‘Well, you shall try your luck upon them. But we are a wild house, Mr.
Finch, and may, in this desolate country, become yet wilder.’

They had come to the gate that led to Herries. They paused. To Francis’
surprise the little man laid his hand on his arm.

‘You are young, sir. I have ten years’ advantage of you. I fancy your
wildness does not frighten me.’

‘On thy head be it then,’ Herries cried, as he led Mameluke up the path.
The way here was very rough, and he began to curse as he hit the loose
stones, plunged into mud, fearing that his horse might stumble and
damage his knees. His mood was changing with the swiftness that belonged
to his moods. Oddly enough his mind had turned to Father Roche. The
little clergyman had reminded him. Why was he burdened with this priest
and the risks and penalties connected with his presence? It was true
that just now there was a lull in the Catholic agitation, but it might
burst out again at any instant. Herries did not doubt but that Roche was
busied in a thousand intrigues both political and religious, and they
were intrigues with which he had no sort of sympathy. Jacobitism made no
appeal to him—he hated the French influence behind it. He wanted no
king for England who would be ruled by French money and ambition.
Moreover, he took in any case but little interest in politics, and had
no romantic feeling for that world. Nor had the Catholic religion
attraction for him; he despised what seemed to him its mummery, the
child’s play, as he saw it, of its tinkling bells and scented air. But
Roche’s influence over him was strong and subtle. Ever since his first
meeting with the man some five years before, it had persisted. And for
what reason? Roche was stern, unsympathetic to all Herries’ pleasures,
showed no warmth of feeling to Herries (no warmth of feeling to anyone,
indeed, save little David), used Herries’ house quite openly for his own
private purposes, had carried on in Doncaster, as Herries well knew, a
network of plans and plots with an odd audacity and defiance. When he
spoke intimately with Herries it was to rebuke him. And yet Herries
would endure from him things that from another he would most furiously
resent. Where lay Roche’s power? In the continued suggestion that he
held somewhere a solution for Herries’ sickness of soul? Not in any
dogma lay that solution, but in something deeper, something far more
profound. . . .

But (and here the house with its lighted windows loomed suddenly up
before him as though it had been pushed up through the rough ground) was
the priest to remain? Why? He and Alice Press should both be sent
packing. One must start fair in this new place—and for a moment before
he pushed back the heavy door he had a picture before his eyes of the
country group in the fading afternoon light, the coloured scene, the
quiet and the animals and the purple-shaded hills. Here in this good
land there should be no place for the priest and the woman. . . . Here
in this good land—and a moment later he was caught into one of his
dark, bestial, frantic rages.

He had left his horse outside the door and, calling Benjamin, pressed up
the staircase to the little tapestried dining-hall. A high,
thick-clustered candelabrum was burning on the table, all the candles
blowing in the winds that came from the floor-cracks, the slits in wall,
roof and window.

At the table his wife was seated crying. Alice Press, very gay in a
crimson gown, was turning scornfully away from her, even as he entered.
The three children were playing together by the oak chest. Over all the
room there was a frantic disorder. Some of the boxes, brought by the
pack-horses the night before, were there, and scattered about were
suits, gowns, china, stuffs, linen, children’s toys.

A strange thick scent of burning wax, damp straw and odours from the
neighbouring cesspool lay heavy about the candle-shine. He had ordered
that the boxes were not to be touched until the morrow, when he could
supervise the opening of them.

By whom had he been disobeyed? Both women began to chatter, his wife
wailing, Alice Press loud and shrill and defiant. The little girls began
to cry. At that moment Benjamin, a foolish smile on his chubby face,
appeared at the stair-head.

Francis Herries caught him by the neck, then, raising the riding-whip
that was still in his hand, cried:

‘What said I to these boxes? Hast thou no wit, thou lubber-pated
bastard?’

Benjamin shouted something; everyone began to call aloud at once. The
room, the house, the world was filled with shouting and stink and a
raging anger.

To come thus, from an afternoon so quiet and promising, to this
vileness! Anger boiled in his heart, choking him. He had Benjamin’s coat
off his back, struck the bare flesh again and again, lashed him about
the head, the legs, the thighs, and when suddenly the man hung his head
and began to droop in his arms he let fall his whip and began to beat
him with his hands, letting him at last drop, a huddled, half-naked
heap.

The man had fainted. Raising Benjamin’s head, Herries was suddenly
remembering how that morning in the fresh air by the pump he had rubbed
in friendliness the man’s body while the birds wheeled through the sky.

A sickness caught him at the heart. He told David to run for some water,
but before the boy had returned the man was reviving. He was lying back,
his head on his master’s knee. He looked up, then, flicking his eyelids,
said:

‘It was not by my word, master, that the boxes were opened.’

Clumsily he rose to his feet; he caught his coat to his bare chest—

‘I’ll be rubbing the horse down,’ he said, and stumbled down the
staircase.

FAMILY

Pomfret Herries lived at this time in one of the most beautiful houses
in Keswick. It was beautiful, not by his own taste or fancy, but because
he wished to have a better house than any one of his neighbours.

This has always been a habit with certain of the Herries. Desiring this,
he chose for architect that strange, saturnine hermit, old John
Westaway, known in Keswick for a madman and the best architect in the
North, a desperate traveller who knew Italy as you might know Skiddaw,
who had been invited again and again to London, but preferred to live in
his little house above the river, seeing no one, liking no one, buried
in his books and art treasures. All over the North Westaway’s fame ran.
He was an old man now, had been, it was said, in his youth the friend
and intimate of Chesterman and Van der Vaart and Vanbrugh, a curmudgeon,
a surly bachelor, in league, some whispered, with the Devil himself,
pottering about that house, with its pictures and statuary, and his dark
Italian servant—a devil, but the finest architect, it might be, in
England.

He had made Pomfret pay for his fancy, and when it was done Pomfret had
grumbled so that you might hear him from John o’ Groat’s to Land’s
End—but it was a beautiful house. People came from Kendal and Carlisle
and Penrith to look at it, so that at the last Pomfret and his wife had
grown proud of it and spoke of it as entirely their doing.

In fine proportion, its roof covered with red tiles, the wrought
ironwork across its front showing like lace against the stone, the house
was oblong without gables. The windows were for their period most
modern. They were sash windows, a great rarity, and they were
beautifully spaced. The doorway had fluted columns and over it there was
a charming and delicate fanlight.

The house was outside the town near to Crosthwaite Church, and the
gardens ran down to the weeds and rushes of the lake-end. The garden
held lime trees and the lawn was bordered with tubs of orange and bay
trees. There was a little terrace and a rosy wall of red brick, and
beyond the formal garden a meadow, the lake and the rising hills. To the
right some greenhouses, a flower garden and a kitchen garden.

Inside, the house was wide, spacious and full of light. First a pillared
hall, on the right the parlour, on the left a fine, wide staircase
opening into a splendid saloon. Beyond the parlour a large bedroom
leading to a greenhouse. On the upper floor other bedrooms.

Pomfret’s chief pride was the saloon, the decoration of which Westaway
had designed and executed—the subject was Paris awarding the apple.
Lady Herries had been disturbed by the naked goddesses until it was seen
that no one else minded.

In this fine house Pomfret inhabited only one room, a dusky apartment
crowded with guns, stuffed animals and fishing-rods. Here he drank
merrily with his friends.

Lady Herries’ home was the parlour, where she read her medicine books,
scolded the maids, suffered in a bitter silence that ancient lady,
Pomfret’s aunt, fed a screaming macaw, and gave her neighbours tea and
chocolate. The three children had their own room far away at the top of
the house.

There was a great array of domestics, from Mrs. Bellamy the housekeeper
to little Peter the black boy, who had been purchased in London,
shivered in the cold, and stole everything that he, with safety, might.

Mrs. Bellamy was of the family of Mrs. Slipslop, and made all the
mischief both in the house and in the neighbourhood that time and
talents permitted her.

They could scarcely be called a united family, for they were never
together. Pomfret diced, drank, rode, hunted with his masculine friends,
who liked his company because he was stupid enough for them to rob him
at will. Jannice, his wife, bullied him when she was with him, forgot
him when she was not. She loved him only when he was ill, and this was
often enough, for his intemperate habits and his swinish feeding caused
him constant attacks of biliousness and vertigo. There was nothing that
Jannice Herries loved like a medical treatise; her familiar and, after
Mrs. Bellamy, most constant companion was old Dr. Ellis, who would
discuss with her by the hour the whole works of that excellent practical
physician, Dr. Thomas Sydenham!

She experimented on her staff, her family and any neighbours who would
permit her. Little Peter, who was sick every other day from stealing
confitures from the store-room, was her most unhappy patient. And yet,
of course, this is not all that can be said about Pomfret and his lady.
At heart they were kindly and well-dispositioned. Only they had no
imagination, and had been covered with a thin skin of wealth that, like
a rash upon their souls, discomforted them, made them uneasy,
suspicious, unhappily proud.

Pomfret loved his children, but did not know how to approach them. He
cuffed them and spoiled them and cuffed them again. He was
generous-natured and desired that his friends should be happy, but he
suspected that they laughed at him, and so was pompous and grand when he
wished to be easy and familiar.

His money he had made, as he well knew, from his obedience to the advice
of a London friend, Hartwell, who, at a certain moment, had directed his
affairs.

Although his companions robbed him he had wisdom sufficient to leave his
affairs in Hartwell’s hands. He pretended to a knowledge of commerce and
exchange; it was, as he knew in his heart, a bare pretence. He did
nothing well, rode badly, shot badly, fished badly. He knew moments of
great unhappiness.

Jannice Herries was also without imagination. She was acrimonious and
bitter, but she knew that this was not her real life. Somewhere real
feeling was hidden, but day succeeded day and nothing was done. She knew
that she was unpopular among the ladies of Keswick, but she swallowed
every compliment that Mrs. Bellamy gave her, and at the end was more
lonely than before.

After her interest in medicine her most active passion was her hatred
for Pomfret’s Aunt Maria, that very ancient lady, who, born in 1645 and
for a time in the fashionable world, was now a hideous remnant of a dead
and musty past. She longed for this old lady to die, and would have
poisoned her ere this, but alone of the household Aunt Maria refused all
of her niece’s drugs. She was now eighty-five years of age.

Finally with both Pomfret and his lady there remained a constant
uneasiness about their wealth. It had come so oddly, without any true
justification. It might go as oddly again. They had witnessed in the
last twenty years a series of financial panics. Now with the abominable
French ready for any villainy, all this new-fangled independence of
servants and labourers, who knew what the next event might be? The
Catholics were listening at every window. Why, here was Francis Herries
coming to live in the neighbourhood and bringing with him quite openly a
rascally priest. Although Walpole and the Whigs were in, who knew how
strong was their power?

Jannice Herries’ favourite remark to Mrs. Bellamy was: ‘Things are not
as they were.’

To which Mrs. Bellamy with a shudder would reply: ‘No, my lady. If I
know my own mind there was never a truer word spoken.’

‘And what will you do, Bellamy, if your master is ruined?’

‘Heaven strike me dead if I ever desert you, my lady! Marry come up,
don’t I know a virtuous place when I see one?’

But Bellamy had been lining her pocket for many a year, and being Mrs.
Bellamy only by courtesy had her eye on a handsome victualler in Kendal,
whose hearth and home she proposed to encompass and govern on the first
signs of distress in the Herries country.

The three children, Anabel, Raiseley and Judith, lived in their own
world. They, like their father, were Herries of the unimaginative,
matter-of-fact breed. They took things as they came, and each, in his or
her own fashion, worked quietly and obstinately for personal profit.
Anabel was good-natured, plump and easy. Raiseley was clever. It would
not be true of him to say that he was without imagination, but it was
imagination of an educational kind.

He was studious, priggish, aloof and cold, rarely roused to anger but
unforgetful of the slightest injury. He had the wise, calculating side
of the Herries blood; he was studious, honest to chilliness, and
despised both his father and his mother. Judith would be beautiful; she
was dark and slender and already cherished her beauty as her most
important asset.

These three were all typical Herries on the stony side of the family
character. They saw everything in front of their noses and nothing
beyond. They did not mind in the least their social isolation. They
might contemn one another, but united at once in condemnation of all
other children.

They were waiting now in their high, chilly room for the visit that
their cousin in Borrowdale was to pay them. Only the little boy, they
understood, was coming with his father and mother. They had already
gathered from the conversation of their elders that Uncle Francis was a
disgrace.

Of the three of them at this time it may be said that Raiseley and
Judith held out no hope of later humanity; for Anabel, because of her
good-nature and a certain carelessness that went with it, there were
possibilities.

On this afternoon the three children were in their chill room quietly
busy. Judith was seated motionless in a high chair, a collar round her
neck, a board tied to her back. This was for her figure. She was
watching the grandfather clock in the corner. Five minutes of her daily
half-hour remained. This half-hour was valued greatly by her, because
she knew that this discipline was for the benefit of her beauty. She was
only nine years of age, but had already a grave and considered air.
Anabel, who was thirteen, was curled up in the window-seat looking at
the pictures of some chap-books, _Babes in the Wood_, _Bluebeard_,
_Little Tom Thumb_. But she was not reading. She knew the old stories by
heart. She was wondering what her little cousin would be like.

She, unlike her brother and sister, was sometimes lonely. She confessed
it to no one, but she loved parties and fun. Maybe this little boy would
be agreeable.

Raiseley was yawning over his Virgil. Mr. Montgomery, who came every day
to teach him Latin and Greek, had but just now gone.

‘Jam pater Aeneas . . .’ murmured Raiseley, and fingered a little box in
which he had a cocoon concealed. He hid this from his parents and Mr.
Montgomery, because they would disapprove if they knew. But soon the
cocoon would be liberated. No one told him any of the things that he
wanted to know about animals, about the stars. Now, when he thought of
these things, a new expression came into his eyes. He was suddenly alive
with a questioning, investigating alertness. His cold, pale, pointed
features gained an interesting sharpness. The book fell from his hand.
There were many things that he would know one day; they should not stop
him pursuing his knowledge. Mr. Montgomery with his sing-song voice, his
perpetual cold at the nose, his eagerness to please, how Raiseley
despised him!

He would like to see Mr. Montgomery whipped as little Peter was whipped,
or standing as the man they had seen one day in the pillory in the
market, his face smeared with the mud and the yellow of the eggs that
people had thrown at him. And, as he thought of these things, his face
achieved an added sharpness, coldly, intellectually speculative—‘Jam
pater Aeneas. . . .’

He looked at the little pile of books beside him—_A Guide to the
English Tongue_, by Thomas Dyche, schoolmaster in London; _Paul’s
Scholars’ Copy-Book_, by John Raynor; _The Use of the Globes_.

He did not look at them resentfully. He would extract from them
everything that they had to give him.

‘Judith,’ he said, ‘I should know more than Mr. Montgomery knows in a
year or two. I would think it fine to see him in the pillory as a week
back we saw that man.’

Judith, motionless, her eyes on the clock, answered: ‘We are to go
downstairs when our uncle and aunt come. I am to wear the grey-blue.’

Anabel, from the window, said: ‘I like David for a boy’s name.’

‘I heard them say,’ went on Raiseley, ‘that Uncle Francis is always
drunken and beats Aunt Margaret.’

‘But he is very handsome,’ said Judith. ‘He was wearing such fine
clothes the other day that father was shabby beside him.’

‘Fine clothes,’ said Raiseley scornfully, ‘and they living in mud and
dirt up to their elbows! They say that Borrowdale is full of witches and
giants—wolves too. I would like mightily to see a wolf. I shall ask
Uncle Francis to take me.’

The clock struck the half-hour. Judith very carefully separated herself
from her board and collar. At that same moment the door opened. They
were told that it was time for them to dress.

David and his mother had indeed already arrived.

Poor Margaret Herries had been for weeks dreading this visit. It was now
a month since they had come to Herries, and the weather had been so
terrible that the ride to Keswick had been impossible. It had rained and
rained; not as it rained in Doncaster, with gusts and flurries and
pauses and whispering, but in a drenching flood, falling from the grey,
lowering sky like sheets of steel.

And the mountains had crept closer and closer, and the cold stolen into
the very webbing of the sheets, the torn tapestries beating against the
wall, and the mice boldly running for comfort to the peat fire. A
horrible month it had been, but with all the courage at her command she
had faced the rain, the isolation, her loathing for Alice Press,
gathered her children round her as she might and made what she could out
of the situation.

Oddly enough she had not been unhappy. Francis had been ever close at
hand. He did not go off for nights at a time as he had done at
Doncaster. That might come later—but at present it was as though the
place cast a spell upon him. He pottered about the house, rode out to
Stye Head, walked up Glaramara and the neighbouring hills, wandered
along the lake by Manesty and Cat Bells, made himself known to some of
the neighbouring yeomen, was silent often enough, drunken at times,
angry once and again, but on the whole more her companion than he had
been since their first marriage year.

And so there had increased in her heart her ever-constant loyalty to
him. What she had suffered watching the degradation of his reputation
during these past years no one would ever know. She would never tell.
Here it was as though he had begun a new life. Stories long commonplace
round Doncaster would here not be known. He would start again, and she
would do everything in her power to assist him. Only his brother’s
family could spoil this fair beginning; she had seen and heard enough
already to feel that Pomfret and his wife were Francis’ detractors and
would from the first take care to be dissociated from any scandal.

She was as fiercely prepared to fight her brother- and sister-in-law as
any lioness in defence of her cubs, but her trouble was that she was not
a lioness. She was a coward; while she was riding pillion behind her
husband and her son, she was aware that at the first sight of Jannice in
her own domain she would lose courage, she would tremble, she would show
faint-heartedness. Francis had things that he must do in Keswick. He
would come later to his brother’s house to fetch her. She must face
Pomfret and Jannice alone.

So she stood, David at her side, in the little hall with its rounded
pillars, its stone floor in black and white squares, its fine picture of
an Italian scene, with dim greys and purple for colour, hanging on the
right of the staircase.

They were ushered into the parlour. It was lit with candles, and David
had never seen such a room. But before he could examine the room he must
be startled by the persons in it, by his aunt Jannice, who was dressed
superbly in a high wig mounted over a cushion and decorated with roses
and daisies, her hoop spread about her, the outer skirt of crimson
velvet and the front of her dress white and silver. On one brown cheek
she wore a black patch. She was grander than any lady that he had ever
seen; no one who came to their house in Doncaster had dressed like that.
Young though he was, he realised that her thin, meagre figure and brown
complexion ill suited such finery.

But his childish attention was soon drawn from his aunt to the terrific
figure who sat in a high chair under the window. This was his great-aunt
Maria.

He would never have believed, had he not seen it with his own eyes, that
any person could be so old and yet live. Her wig of a bright brown
colour was arranged in a fashion of fifty years ago, falling about her
strange mask of a powdered, painted face in long curled ringlets. Over
one eye was a black patch. Her green bodice was peaked, and her full,
open sleeves were caught together with jewelled clasps. Her wide skirt
was of purple satin. Her fingers, so thin that they were like the ivory
sticks of a fan, were loaded with jewels.

On her lap was a small King Charles spaniel.

She appeared a painted image. Except for her one visible eye nothing in
her face moved. David was a polite little boy, but again and again he
had to stare. Here was a portent, a revelation in his young life.

The little black boy was standing behind Lady Herries’ chair, and as
soon as greetings had been exchanged they all sat down. The little black
boy handed chocolate; a bright purple macaw in a gilt cage by the window
screamed.

For a little while there was a terrible silence. The room was very hot;
there was a large log fire. The sky beyond the window was bright with a
silver glow.

When the talk had started David could look more easily about him.

He was indeed enchanted with the softness and beauty of everything.
Beyond the wide window he could see the trim hedges, the paved path, the
fountain with a strange stone bird, long-necked and violent-beaked,
rising out of it, and beyond the fountain the line of trees guarding the
waters of the lake.

Within the room there were countless objects that he longed to examine
more closely, a screen worked in gold thread, a silver casket, a clock
with the sun, moon and stars on its face. But more than these, the
terrible old woman with her strange ringlets, her painted face, the
cascades of her bright purple dress, the sharp-pointed fingers weighted
with flashing jewellery. . . .

‘Indeed,’ his aunt was saying, ‘I wonder at Mr. Flammery. ’Tis a poor
child that doesn’t know its own father, and there’s a multitude of his
own poor children must be in a fine confusion.’

This puzzled David, who, looking first at his aunt and then at his
flustered mother sweating in the face with the heat of the room and the
agitation of this her first so important visit, wondered how it could be
that any child should not know its own father. He of a certainty knew
his well enough.

‘Yes, indeed,’ his aunt continued, looking, as he was even now old
enough to discern, with an odd mixture of curiosity and contempt at his
mother. ‘You must be well aware, Margaret, of the world into which you
have come. In winter I doubt that you’ll be able to move a step. You
live in the heart of savages, and when the lake is too wild for passage
and the roads all of a muck to your armpits the civilised world will be
as distant from you as the Indies.’

‘I don’t doubt,’ said Margaret, flushing and perspiring the more, for
she knew that it was at her own abandoned Francis that these remarks
were made, ‘but that the days will pass. There’s sufficient to do about
the house to take a month of winters. . . .’

David then was aware that his great-aunt’s eye had turned in his
direction. He was fixed by it as a rabbit by the eye of a snake. . . .
It was as though he, sitting on the edge of his chair, and this very
ancient lady, both of them motionless, were holding some strange secret
communication. Then he was aware of something further—that his
great-aunt was about to speak.

In an odd, cracked but exceedingly piercing tone she said: ‘God save His
Gracious Majesty.’

The worst had happened. The old woman was silent often enough for days
together, and this was well, because she was a burning fanatical
Jacobite. The terrors into which her dangerous political opinions had
again and again plunged Pomfret and his wife were both ludicrous and
tragic. Sometimes for weeks she kept to her room, and on every occasion
that saw her enter that sanctuary everyone about her breathed the hope
that it would be for the last time, but her powers of revival were
incredible, and down once more she would come to sit and watch and await
her awful moment.

She had been born on the 14th of June 1645, the day of the battle of
Naseby, but her great days had been during the last years of Queen Anne,
when she had known Godolphin and Marlborough and been received by Lady
Masham, having her feet planted in both camps.

But she had been nevertheless, heart and soul, Jacobite, and, it was
said, played some part in the intrigues of those last dramatic months.
The Elector of Hanover had been for her the Devil himself, and when his
cause had been definitely won she had retired from London, professed
openly her Jacobite sentiments and chattered and prayed for the coming
of the Day.

No one had much regarded her; she had lived in a small house in
Winchester, until, her brain softening, Pomfret, driven by one of the
kindest and gentlest impulses of his life, had given her shelter and
protection.

How many thousands of times since then he had longed for her decease was
a secret between himself and his Maker.

Now with terror and dismay Jannice Herries heard her speak. Here was
their skeleton clattering straight out from the cupboard and before that
fool Margaret Herries. But Margaret was too deeply buried in the warmth
of her confusion to pay much regard. Only the little boy felt the power
of those few cracked words; something spoke in his heart, some strange
sympathy that he suddenly felt, to which he quite blindly and
unknowingly responded. He was to remember at a later time this queer
muffled moment.

The situation was immediately saved for Jannice Herries by the entrance
of her children. The children had beautiful manners. Mrs. Bellamy in
black silk, her hands folded across her stomach, stood behind them—the
boy bowed, the little girls curtsied. Anabel’s eyes smiled at David. He
was quick enough at once to perceive that the other girl was thinking of
her own looks. She was like his own sister Mary in that.

And then the eyes of the two boys met, and they knew one another at once
for foes. David had as friendly a heart as any boy in the kingdom, but
he realised an enemy when he saw one. One straight look at Raiseley’s
cold reserve and proud consequence and something within him said: ‘I
hate my cousin.’ Just as the cracked voice of the old woman speaking to
him five minutes before out of an ancient past was to return to him with
significance in years to come, so that first glance exchanged with
Raiseley was to influence the Herries family fortunes for many future
generations.

Looking at Anabel, David thought to himself: ‘That’s a friendly girl.’
He was uncomfortable among these grown-up persons, and hoped that it
would be suggested that he should go with his cousins to see the garden
or their toys. He would like finely to inspect more closely that
fountain of the beaked bird or to hunt among the reeds at the water’s
edge.

But no suggestion was made. He too was standing now, his hands stiffly
at his side as his father had taught him. The room grew ever hotter and
hotter, and with every moment he felt more indignantly Raiseley’s
scornful eyes upon him.

Margaret Herries must talk to her nephew and nieces. She was never at
her ease with children.

‘Fine children,’ she said nervously to her sister-in-law, ‘and seemingly
in grand health.’

The word ‘health’ was the trumpet to sound the charge to Jannice
Herries, who answered proudly: ‘Fine and sound they are, sister. Six
months last sennight Judith here was sorely threatened with the Falling
Sickness—hast thou heard of the Antepileptic Crow, sister?’

‘I fear not,’ said Margaret timidly.

‘’Tis a perfect cure for the Falling Sickness. Judith was cured by the
crow. Deplume and eviscerate a large crow, casting away its Feet and
Bill; put into its Belly the Heart, Liver, Lungs, Bladder of the Gall,
with Galangal and Aniseeds; bake it in a new Earthen Vessel well shut or
closed in an Oven with Household Bread; after it is cooled, separate the
Flesh from the Sides or Bones, and repeat this Operation of baking the
second or third time, but taking great care that it may not be burnt,
then reduce it into a fine powder.’ She recited this in a high sing-song
as though it were poetry, her eyes almost closed. Opening them she saw
that Margaret was gazing at her with great humility and reverence. Maybe
the woman was not such a fool after all. She would make, it might
happen, something of a companion. A kindliness stole about Jannice
Herries’ heart. It would be something to have a friendly creature near
her whom she could patronise and gratify and instruct. The days in truth
were lonely enough. . . .

‘You must come and see us at Herries,’ Margaret went on to the children.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Raiseley answered, gravely bowing. ‘It is said that there
are wolves in Borrowdale. I would gladly see a wolf.’

Margaret smiled timidly. ‘David shall show you the wolves. He has been
already in the mountains. Have you not, David?’

Judith, who, since the Falling Sickness had passed as a topic, felt
perhaps that she was not receiving sufficient attention, smiled her
prettiest smile, so that her aunt, thinking how beautiful a child she
was, said, speaking directly to her:

‘My little girls, Mary and Deborah, will wish to show you their toys and
babies.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Judith in her softest, gentlest voice, so that her
aunt looking at her loved her.

Once more they were interrupted, and this time it was the two men of the
family. David waited for his father’s entrance. First there was Uncle
Pomfret, red-faced, noisy, with his: ‘Well, then—here’s all the family!
Haste away! Haste away!’ and then a sudden look of almost childish
discomfort and unease. Quietly behind him David’s father, kindly to-day
and, for David, so handsome in his dark suit and lace ruffles that all
the colour in the room went out before him, dimmed to abasement.

Yes, his father was in good humour to-day, coming forward and kissing
the old lady’s hand, saluting his sister-in-law’s brown cheek, turning
then to the children, pinching the cheeks of the girls, tapping Raiseley
on his shoulder. . . . How proud of him David was and how ardently
longing for the moment to come when he would catch that glance and,
perhaps, that smile. But for a while he did not. His father paid him no
attention. The parlour was overcrowded with figures and the sound of
Uncle Pomfret’s demonstrations. Now he was being jolly with his
children: ‘You will be the death of your poor father . . . I promised
your mother to give up half the afternoon to your entertainment, and
wasn’t I to show you the best pack of dogs in England? But no, Mr.
Montgomery don’t allow. Pox on Mr. Montgomery—and here’s your uncle and
little cousin come to visit us—yes, and your aunt too. . . . Pleased to
see you, sister . . . and there’s no Mr. Montgomery to stop a family
welcome, odrabbit it! I am determined upon your being good children now
and welcoming your little cousin . . . a fine boy, brother Francis. He
shall come a-hunting. Canst ride, boy?’

‘Yes, uncle,’ said David, ‘a little.’

‘That’s more than thy cousin Raiseley can do then. Put him on a horse
and he’s like the Witch of Endor on a broomstick. . . . Wilt thou learn
to ride then, Raiseley, to please thy father?’

This public mockery was anguish to Raiseley, nor did he fail to ledger
it in the account against his young cousin. But his pale face did not
alter; no shadow of a change was upon it. Looking his father in the
face, he answered steadily:

‘I will learn, sir, an you wish it.’

‘An I wish it!’ His father broke into a roar of laughter—‘Hark to that
now! An I wish it! Have I wished, then, to have a milksop for a son?
’Tis all your Montgomerys and their Latin grammars that have spoilt
thee, boy—Here,’ catching David suddenly by his breeches and raising
him in the air, ‘here’s the spit of a tree! Here’s a lad knows a dog
when he sees ’un, that I’ll wager! Wilt come with thy uncle hunting,
David?’

But he waited not for an answer. He was aware that his wife thought him
foolish and noisy. He turned confusedly to chatter to his sister-in-law.

It was then that David had a word with his father. They were standing a
little back from the others. ‘David, you are to go now. Your mother will
ride home with me. You will find Father Roche to the left along the
road. He is waiting now at the turn to Crosthwaite Church. You will ride
back with him.’

At once David obeyed. He turned, bowed to his great-aunt, kissed his
aunt’s hand, heard above his head the excuses for his departure, smiled
at his girl cousins, exchanged one look with Raiseley and was gone.

How proud he was to be treated thus—as though he were already a man!

He pushed open the heavy house-door, stepped through the courtyard,
between the high gates and into the dusky road. It was almost dark;
shadows lay about the broad path and little winds ran whispering about
his feet.

A great sense of adventure possessed him. Behind him was the lighted
town, near him the warm house with its fires and talking company, and
outside the house the garden with the bird fountain and all its ordered
discipline running to the wild edge of the lake with the clustered
reeds. Young though he was, he yet felt the humanity and safety of this
world crowded with all its persons so diverse as the ancient lady and
little Peter and Cousin Raiseley, his enemy. All this within firelit
walls, but, outside, the long road running, as though on a secret
purpose, below the mountain that seemed to him huge in the night air,
Skiddaw; by now he knew its name. But here, also, there was a church,
and men might ride with ease, and at short distance all the traffic of
the town. But away from it the road ran on, curving at the lake’s end,
running up the hill, then above the lake’s side until at last it reached
that little bridge and the high rocks behind it that were the barrier of
his own dark country. There was danger, there, romance and adventure.
Cousin Raiseley had said that there were wolves there. He did not know
how that might be, but a month’s living there had shown him how strange
and removed a world it was, and already it was beginning to pull at his
boy’s heart, so that he was ready to defend it and feel that he was
citizen of it. Yes, he would know every tree, every rock, every corner
of it before long; he would push his way into every one of the
mysteries. . . .

He had been walking swiftly down the road, a little afraid, although he
would not have owned it to anyone, of the sound of his own footsteps,
when he saw at the parting of the two ways a horse and a figure standing
beside it.

The figure came to meet him, and at first he did not recognise it,
because Father Roche was dressed as an ordinary gentleman in plain
riding clothes.

‘Father Roche,’ he whispered. He had not intended to whisper, but the
silence and loneliness of the road commanded him.

He was taken up and in another moment was seated in the front of the
saddle. They started off.

‘Not Father Roche any more,’ the figure behind him murmured. ‘Mr. Roche
. . . the times move, and we must move with them.’

His voice had to-night more than ever before the power to move David. He
was himself already excited and stirred, and, as they moved over Derwent
Hill, through the village of Portinscale and then up over Swinside Hill,
with every step they seemed to be moving into some mysterious country,
and it was Father Roche’s power and spirit that was leading them. Was he
then no longer a priest? Could you at one moment be a priest and then,
at the next moment, not? Was it at his father’s orders that he had
ceased to be a priest? But for the moment he was too deeply excited by
his own experiences. ‘Uncle Pomfret’s house is very grand. It is grander
than ours at Doncaster. There is a garden with a fountain that is a
bird’s head, and a clock with the sun and moon on its face. My
great-aunt Maria is a very old lady—she looks a hundred years. She has
long hair falling about her face. My cousins were present, and my cousin
Raiseley is very grave as though he thought well of himself. . . .’ He
paused, then added: ‘We will fight one day. And I shall win.’ His little
back straightened and his short legs tightened about the horse’s neck.
‘Uncle Pomfret always speaks at the top of his voice. He lifted me by my
breeches and said that I should go hunting with him. Will my father
permit me, think you?’

‘Yes, David, when you are older.’

David sighed. ‘It is always when I am older. My cousin Raiseley asked
whether there were wolves in Borrowdale. He said that he wished to see
one, but I doubt it. I think he does not care for dogs and horses and
wild animals.’

They were going more slowly now, climbing the hill. It was bitterly
cold, even a little snow was falling, and a few stars were like points
of ice in the sky. They were climbing to high ground. There were three
paths on this farther side of the lake, but as Father Roche had been
warned in Keswick only one was passable for a horse and that the
highest.

‘My great-aunt Maria,’ David went on, drawing a little back on Father
Roche for greater warmth, ‘said once “God save His Gracious Majesty.”
Aunt Jannice was vexed, so that I knew that it could not be the King in
London. It is forbidden, is it not, to speak of the other King in Rome?’

Father Roche drew the boy closer to him. The time had come, then, to
speak. The boy was now of a sufficient age. For years now he had been
waiting for this moment, and he was well pleased that it should be at
this instant, cold and sharp under the winter night sky, with the world
so silent on every side of them. It had been the lesson of his life that
he should have no human passions, and he had learnt it well, but in
spite of all his lessons human feeling had grown in his heart for this
boy and this boy’s father. There were many other plans and schemes in
his life that went far beyond his momentary relations with the Herries
family. He stayed with them only because it suited his larger purposes
to do so, but growing up in his heart in these last years had been the
longing to turn this boy on to his own paths. During these weeks since
coming to Borrowdale David seemed to have grown in mind and perception.
He was already wise in some things beyond his years.

‘David, will you listen a little as we ride? I have wished for some time
past to speak to you. You are of an age enough now to understand.’

David nodded his head proudly. The only sound in all the world was the
clap-clap of the horse’s hoofs on the frozen ground.

Father Roche went on: ‘There was a King in England once who was a
martyr. Wicked men in the malice of their hearts slew him, and so
interfered with one of God’s most holy laws—the Divine Right that He
hath given to those whom He has appointed as His rulers on this earth.
This martyr, King Charles of blessed memory, was, perhaps more than any
other man on this earth, near in his sufferings to our Saviour Himself.
When Christ suffered there was darkness over all the land, and so when
King Charles was under trial there were mighty wonders in the sky. You
have read of the centurion who was assured that He was the Son of God,
and his servant was healed; so with the Blessed Martyr, one of his
guards was driven by conviction of sin to repentance. Did they not part
our Sovereign’s garments among them? Even so have they taken his houses,
his possessions, his very garments from our master. . . . And in his
life, in his gentleness, his courtesy, his love of his fellow-men, did
King Charles approach most closely that blessed prototype.’

Father Roche paused. The road ran now over Cat Bells and Brandelhow;
from its bend the land dropped straight to the lake, which could be seen
now like a dark mirror of jet below hills that were faintly silver. The
horse’s breath rose in front of them in clouds of steam; facing them was
the hump, black as ebony, of the Castle Crag, and, more gently grey, the
hills behind it. For young David, to whom this view was to become one of
life’s eternal symbols, he was to hear always, when he beheld it, the
beautiful, melodious voice of the priest and to see again the scattered
steely points of the stars in the velvet sky.

‘His was an unrenounced right of sovereignty. None could take it from
him. He had been placed there by God, and man had no voice in that
choice and circumstance. He was murdered and betrayed by the sons of the
Devil. . . .’

A thrill of sympathy touched David’s heart. Oh, had he been there, he
would have died for that King!

‘Even as Christ did, so could he work miracles. Have you ever heard how,
being taken by his captors through the town of Winchester, an inn-keeper
of that city, who was grievously ill and suffocating, flung himself on
his knees before His Majesty, crying “God save the King!”, and the King
said: “Friend, God grant thee thy desire,” and the tumours and sores
disappeared, and the man was made whole? And the kerchiefs dipped in the
King’s blood after his death had also this miraculous property.

‘His son had also this virtue, and, it is said, touched one hundred
thousand persons to cure them. . . . Since this family appointed by God
to rule over England have been in exile God’s face has been turned away
from us. Nothing is so sure and certain in this world as that our
beloved country shall not again prosper until our rightful King returns
to us. Do you understand what I have been saying to you, David?’

‘Yes, sir,’ answered David in an awed voice.

They clattered through the little village of Grange. Some woman came to
a lighted door to watch them pass. Under the stone bridge the river,
flooded with the recent rains, rushed to the lake. They turned into
their valley under the dark rocks. ‘The time may come, David, when every
true man will be challenged. Under which King, God’s or man’s? What will
thy answer be, boy?’

‘Under God’s King, sir,’ answered David.

‘Keep silence about what I have said even to your father, but talk to me
when you have a mind. Wonder at nothing that you may see me do. I shall
come and be gone again, but wherever I may be I shall know that I can
trust thee. . . .’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You will not be afraid if a day should come . . .’

‘No, sir. Only my father . . .’ It was not for him then to know how
little in later harsh fact this picture of God’s King would affect him.

‘Your father is my friend. He knows me.’

‘Yes, sir. . . . Will he, too, be ready when the day comes?’

Roche hesitated—

‘Every true man who loves his God and his country will be ready.’

‘Yes, sir,’ answered David again, suddenly sleepy and very cold.
Loyalties? He now had many. To his father, to Deborah, to this King in
Rome. Life was beginning to be filled with great adventure. There was
his father in his dark suit with the silver cuffs, there was the old
lady a thousand years old, Cousin Raiseley, whom he would one day fight,
his uncle who would take him out hunting, the King in Rome who made
people well by touching them, Father Roche who was now no more a priest,
his mother whom he loved and Mrs. Press whom he hated, and the old woman
in Herries who was a witch, and the hill with the caves, and the more
distant hills, where one day he would make great discoveries.

They turned to the house, black and cold under the scattered stars. But
it was home, and there would be fire and something to eat, and then
falling asleep in the room where his father would afterwards come . . .
and then the King in Rome . . .

He was shivering with cold when Father Roche lifted him down from the
horse and carried him in.

THE DEVIL

David looked up at the woman whom he so thoroughly detested, with
fearless eyes.

‘I went out because I wanted.’

‘Yes, and the muck and all you’ve got into,’ she answered crossly. ‘But
it isn’t for me to say, I’ve no authority. And the horses not returned
yet from Keswick, and the hills darkening the whole place. I hate this
house—from the first instant I set foot in it I’ve hated it. A nice,
pretty kind of life for one who’s young enough and handsome enough for a
frolic or two.’

She swung the silver chain that lay about her neck and touched the
crimson velvet of her sleeves.

‘And you fast with the priest all the morning,’ she continued, her sharp
eyes darting about the shadowy room. ‘What is it he must speak so long
about with a child like you?’

‘He teaches me Latin,’ David answered quietly.

‘Yes, and many another lesson, I’ll swear,’ she answered.

He could see that her ears were ever straining for a sound.

‘Ugh!’ she shivered, ‘the rain’s coming down again, and all the old
tapestries flapping against the wall. It wasn’t so in Doncaster, I can
promise you, before your father engaged me.’

‘No,’ said David, hating her.

‘No, indeed. There was music there and dancing and the Fair at midsummer
and the Plays at Yule. But here . . .’

She broke off. She thought that she had caught the clap of the horses’
hoofs on the ragged stones of the little court. She sprang to the
darkening window, then turned impatiently back, caught the flickering
taper and held it to the leaded pane. Once again she was disappointed.
There were no horses there—only the tap of some branches against the
wall and the seeping drip of the rain.

‘Why did you come here?’ asked David.

She struck her hand violently on the table—‘Why? why? why?’ she
answered passionately. ‘You are a child. How should you know? And
yet——’ She came over to him, caught him by the shoulders and stared
into his eyes. ‘You hate me, do you not? Young though you are, you know
enough for that. You all hate me here and wish me gone. And most of all
that priest—who has persuaded him against me.’

‘He is not a priest now,’ answered David. ‘He is only Mr. Roche now.’

‘No priest? Yes, that is fine talk. Once a priest always a priest. And
where has he gone this afternoon, riding away to Keswick? Where is it
that he goes for nights together?’

‘I don’t know,’ answered David.

‘I’ll tell you more,’ she continued. ‘He can be in prison any day. There
are the laws against the Catholics, and he serving Mass in that upper
room. Have I no ears nor eyes? So he shall be in prison if he returns
and I have my way.’

She stopped again to listen. The house was intensely silent. The two
little girls were with their mother in her room. There could be heard
even through the rain and the wind the noise of falling water, the
swollen stream tumbling down the side of the hill at the house’s back.
She stood thinking, then came closer again to David. He moved as though
he would shrink from her, then firmly stood his ground.

‘David, do you not think you could speak to him, to your father? When
nobody else is by—he listens to you. I have noticed that when no other
can speak to him he can be patient with you. Ask him if he will not ride
out with me for an hour—I would tell him certain things. For weeks now
I have not been alone with him, and I shall go mad . . . this desire
. . . this longing. . . .’

She broke off as though the words choked her, putting one hand to her
throat and with the other gripping the boy’s arm. David saw that she was
in great suffering, and could have been sorry for her had he not hated
her so. He remembered that night at the Keswick inn when his father had
come in and kissed her. He hated that she should touch him, but he did
not move.

‘You must speak to him yourself,’ he answered. ‘My father, these past
weeks, has had business in Keswick and in the country here.’

‘Business in Keswick!’ she answered scornfully, pushing him from her so
that he almost fell. ‘Fine business! Such as he had in Doncaster. Riding
into Keswick to play at cards and look at the women, stumbling about in
these mucky country paths to find a girl with bright eyes. . . .’

David cried: ‘You shall not speak against my father. When he wishes to
talk with you he will tell you. Yes, it is true that we all hate you
here and wish you gone. My mother cries because of you. You struck
Deborah when she had done no wrong. You should return to Doncaster,
where there are games and music. . . .’

He was trembling with rage and with a desire that in some way he might
persuade her to go. Oh, if only she would go away. . . .

But already she had forgotten him. Her ears again had caught a sound,
and this time she was not deceived.

The clatter of hoofs was on the stones of the court, and at the same
instant Margaret Herries, the two little girls beside her, appeared,
holding a light, at the stair’s head.

‘Is he come? Is he come?’ she cried eagerly, and then started down the
rickety stairway, moving heavily and awkwardly, the children close
behind her.

The hall, that had been only a moment before so dark and drear with the
faint light and old Herries sneering from the wall, was now all alive.

Francis Herries in his deep riding-coat, Wilson following him with
candles, entered, and his wife and the children ran to him. Alice Press
stayed in the dusk. They could see at once that he was in a good mood.
He laughed as he saw them, caught Deborah and David to him, bent forward
and kissed his wife.

‘Yes, something to eat and drink. I’m parched and famished. The rain
blew against us like the plague. I thought Mameluke would have fallen
twice, and it was such thick darkness along Cat Bells that it was God’s
miracle we were not in the lake.’ He pulled Deborah’s hair. ‘Thou
knowest there’s something here for thee and for Mary too—the other
pocket for David. . . .’ Laughing and shouting with excitement, they
felt in the pockets and pulled out the bundles. For Deborah there was a
‘baby’ with bright flaxen hair and a dress of green silk, for Mary a toy
tea-set, cups and saucers decorated with pink roses, and for David
battledore and shuttlecock.

With every moment the room grew more lively. A big log-fire was leaping
in the open fire-place. Wilson and his daughter were setting the table;
Benjamin had come in (Nathaniel had left them at Martinmas), a bottle of
wine in either hand, his round face smiling with the pleasantry of the
familiar servant who knows that to-night he has nothing to fear from his
master’s temper. Only Alice Press stood back against the wall, without
moving, her hand against her heart.

Francis Herries, his riding-coat flung into a chair, stood before the
fire, his legs spread, warming his back.

‘Dear brother Pomfret is to visit us to-morrow,’ he said. ‘He will
condescend to take the journey. Keswick was a pool of muck; you couldn’t
stir for the mud. And so, Deb, you love your baby?’

Deborah was sitting on a stool at her mother’s feet, hugging her doll.
She was in an ecstasy of happiness, rocking the doll in her arms, then
straightening it to smooth its stiff hair, her eyes shining, looking at
her brother every once and again to see that he was sharing in her
pleasure.

Francis Herries, looking out at them all, hummed in a half-whisper the
children’s song:

‘Lady Queen Anne who sits in her stand,
And a pair of green gloves upon her hand,
As white as a lily, as fair as a swan,
The fairest lady in a’ the land.’

To-night he was well content. The mood was upon him when everything
seemed fair. It was good thus to come home to his own, to find the
candles shining and his own things about him, and his children, whom he
loved, longing for him. The devil of restlessness was not with him. That
afternoon in Keswick he had won three fine bets at the cock-fighting. He
had drunk just enough to make the world glow. Even Margaret, his wife,
could seem, close to him, neither so stout nor so foolish. . . . Ah, if
they would let him alone, his little pack of demons, he could make a
fine thing of this life yet.

His eyes, roaming, found Alice Press, motionless against the wall. His
voice changed.

‘Have the babies been good?’ he asked her.

She came forward into the candlelight.

‘Well enough,’ she answered, and turning sharply, left the room.

The food came in. The others had dined long ago, but they crowded about
him as he ate, and Benjamin stood behind them, smiling beneficently, as
though they were all his handiwork.

While he ate and drank he told them little things about his Keswick
day—how they had been baiting a bull in the market-place and two dogs
had been killed; how there had been a medicine man pulling out teeth,
and he had pulled two wrong ones from an old woman, and she had demanded
her money back, but he had not given it: the old woman’s son had fought
him and knocked his tub over; how he had had a talk with old Westaway,
the architect of Uncle Pomfret’s house, and what a strange old man he
was and had been the world over and seen the Pope in Rome and the Czar
of all the Russias, and spoke in a shrill piping voice, and trembled
with anger, so they said, at the sight of a woman; how there was a
little black boy for sale like the one Aunt Jannice had, and some
splendid dogs, big and fierce, who would do finely for defending the
house in the winter; how there had been in the market-square the day
before a gathering of those strange people, the Quakers, and they had
been set upon and two of them stripped naked and splashed with tar; how
they told him that there was a band of robbers now in Wasdale that came
down from Scafell and had murdered two shepherds in the last week; and
there was a fine gathering of gentlemen for the cock-fight and he had
not done so ill there. . . .

Here he broke off; he knew what Margaret thought of his
cock-fighting—another evening he might have teased her and been pleased
to see the fear come into her eyes, but not to-night. . . . He was young
as David to-night. He had David on his knee, his hand fingering his
hair. His wife, Margaret, was praying: ‘Oh, Lord, let this last awhile.
Let this last awhile.’

After his supper they played Blind-man’s Buff. Francis Herries’ eyes
were bound with the handkerchief. The children ran, screaming and
laughing; Margaret herself played and ran into his arms, and once
again—after how many years—her husband had his arms about her, held
her, kissed her cheek. It was David’s turn to be blinded, and, as he
stood in darkness, he could hear all the sounds—the crack and tumble of
the fire and the hiss of the falling ash, the rain against the window,
the breathing of the people about him; and it seemed to him that all the
room was lit with red light and old great-great-grandfather Herries came
down from his picture-frame and ordered him to come to him. He ran
forward; an instant of awful terror came to him. But all was well; it
was into Benjamin’s arms that he had run, and as he felt the stout, soft
body with his hands he screamed with excited relief: ‘It’s Benjamin!
It’s Benjamin!’—then Benjamin was blind man.

* * * * *

After breakfast the whole world is filled with light. Everything moves
together. Round Herries the entire universe centres itself, spreading
out to endless distances that are mysteries—China, Pera, the kingdom of
Samarcand—but pouring all its waters into this one deep purple
pool—purple of Glaramara, purple of the shadows and eaves and
door-post, purple of the feathers in the peacock fan carried by the
Princess in Deb’s chapbook, purple of the darker river shadows that lie
beneath the spume and froth tumbling through Grange to the lake. Through
the shadows of this purple February morning, David, standing at the
road-bend, Deborah beside him, saw the moving of all the people around
him—Alice Press yawning at the window, his father drinking his
breakfast ale; Benjamin in the little court, his hand on Mameluke; his
mother hearing Mary her morning prayer; the old witch grandmother Wilson
silent against the wall, her white kerchief about her chin, leaning on
her stick; Wilson himself moving to the cows; then, a little more
distantly, Moorcross, the home of the statesman Peel—Peel, the tallest,
stoutest man David had ever seen—famous for his wrestling, with a boy
of David’s own age, whom David would like to know; and beyond the Peels
again, all Borrowdale, with the names that were becoming part of him,
Rosthwaite and Stonethwaite, Seathwaite and Seatoller, and the hills,
glittering on this lovely morning, Glaramara, Scafell, the Gavel;
wolves, maybe, above Stye Head, and robbers, his father had said, in
Wasdale, and fairies, gnomes, devils, witches. . . .

Deb’s hot hand held his more tightly.

‘What are you looking for, David?’

What was he looking for? He did not know. But this was to be a day of
days. His happiness last evening, the games, sleeping on the small
pallet beside his father’s bed and then waking to so wonderful a day!
After all the rain and wind, this stillness and shining glitter, small
fleecy clouds like puddings or puppies plump against the shadowed
softness of the blue, the branch of no tree stirring, so clear that the
crowing of a cock far away towards Seatoller could plainly be heard,
but, as always here, the sound of running waters, now one, now two, now
fast as though an urgent message had come to hasten, now slow with a
lazy drawling sound. . . .

He knew that to-day he could have the small shaggy pony, Caesar, that
his father had bought from Peel. It was a whole holiday. Mr. Finch would
not appear. No one would care what he did nor where he went. He would
like to ask the Peel boy to go with him, but he was shy, and the Peel
boy spoke so odd a language and then, of course, had his work to
do. . . .

At that instant, so miraculous is life, the Peel boy passed them. The
Peel boy was bigger and stronger than David, very broad of the chest and
thick of the leg; his eyes were blue and his hair very fair; his cheeks
were rosy, and he whistled out of tune. He was whistling now, but when
he saw Deborah and David he stopped. He paused and smiled.

‘Good day,’ said David, also smiling.

‘’Day,’ said the boy, shuffling his feet. They grinned and said nothing.

‘Have you a knife, please?’ David asked.

‘Aye.’

David did not need one, but when the large rough cutlass was put in his
hand he chipped off the small branch of a tree.

‘Thank you.’ He tried again. ‘’Tis a fine day.’

‘Aye.’

‘We have holiday.’

‘Aye.’

‘I shall ride Caesar to the valley end.’

‘Aye.’

Then the Peel boy bobbed his head and went on down the path. He turned
back.

‘You may have t’ knife,’ he said.

‘Oh, no, I thank you,’ said David, very greatly touched. Then seeing
disappointment—‘Well—if you wish——’

He took the knife, and the Peel boy, delighted, started down the path
again, whistling once more out of tune.

The day was well begun.

He walked slowly back to the house, his hand tight in Deb’s. She asked:
‘David, may I come with you on Caesar?’

‘No,’ he answered, ‘I go alone.’ He felt her hand give a little
quiver—‘Why, you are not afeared? I shall be back by dusk.’

She nodded her head bravely. ‘I shall wash my new baby.’ But she had
something in her mind. She noticed so much more than Mary. She was
exceedingly sensitive and would always be. She would always live alone,
however many people were near her, and would give herself in passionate
devotion to one or two, realising that it was the law of her life that
she should give rather than receive.

Already, although she was only seven years of age, she knew of many
little things in and around Herries that no one else had seen—the face
of a woman, thin and sharp, carved on the oak chest in the dining-hall;
a ruby ring that old great-great-grandfather Herries wore on his finger
in the picture; the way that Alice Press had of looking scornfully at
her finger-nails; the fashion that old Mrs. Wilson had of walking like a
blind woman, her eyes tightly shut; the coarse crowing laugh of her
granddaughter—and she knew everything about David: the straightness of
his back when he was standing waiting for something, how one leg would
rub against the other when he began to be eager in talking about
something; his smile, when one end of his mouth seemed to curl more than
another; the roughness that a wind would make of his hair when he wore
no cap, the beautiful coolness of his forehead when he let her put her
hand on it. She did not know that she knew these things—she had as yet
no self-consciousness.

The most common sensation for her would always be fear, and the constant
duty of her life would be building up sufficient courage with which to
meet it. Apprehension would attack her at every turn. It was as though
she had three skins less than other folk. Even as a baby she had seen
shadows in the room that no one else had seen, heard footsteps that no
one else had heard. Things assumed significance for her beyond all fact
and reason. There had been a tree in the Doncaster garden, stout in the
trunk, thinly carved in its branches. How she had hated that tree, what
terrors undefined it had brought to her, how, in all the other
excitements of leaving Doncaster, this had been predominant—that she
need never see that tree again!

And here at Herries already there were terrors. Alice Press and old Mrs.
Wilson of course—these were natural alarms—but also the pump in the
yard, the two suits of armour within the house-door that seemed to her
to have faces, one white and one yellow, and the steps of someone
walking on the floor of the parlour-loft when they were in the
dining-hall.

All around her, everyone was insensitive. It was not a time when people
noticed such things. There were witches and warlocks, fairies and
gnomes, but they were real and active with persons as positive as the
serving-man or the night watchman. She kept—as she was always to
keep—everything to herself. David alone understood something of her
sensitiveness, and this not because he shared it with her, but because
he loved her so deeply that she was like part of himself. Only when she
was with him she knew no fear. Her confidence in him was as though he
were someone divine. Where he was no fear could come, no evil live.

This morning as they neared the house he wanted to go into the yard
behind to see whether Benjamin were there. She shrank back.

‘Come, Deb. Benjamin hath a new puppy Peel’s man gave to him.’

She shook her head and, breaking from him, ran in by the front door. He
remembered then that he must see his mother. Every morning he was with
her for half an hour, and read out of the _Life of King Arthur_ or the
Bible for her. He read very well; he liked books when there were not
horses and dogs and games like football and battledore. But to-day he
did not want to read. It was not a day for books, and as he moved slowly
into the house, he felt impatient with his mother. He shared a little
with his father the intolerance of her clumsiness, her habit of tears,
her absent-mindedness, and, as with all of us when we are impatient with
those who love us, he wished that she did not love him quite so much.

She was so easily hurt. She was always asking him what he was doing,
where he was going, with whom he had been; and although there was no
reason at all why he should not tell her everything, he inclined to be
secret with her because of her curiosity. Then he had seen, so many
times, his sister Mary flatter and cheat her mother because of something
that she had wanted, and that made him honest to the point of
discourtesy. He loved her better when he was not with her; he hated
Alice Press because she made his mother unhappy, but he did not mind
also making her unhappy. Now, when he went in, he would be forced to
tell her about what he was going to do, how he would ride Caesar to the
valley’s end, and fish in the stream below Stye Head and watch to see if
a wolf should be prowling under Glaramara. And he did not want to tell
her these things. It would spoil them a little, make them more ordinary
and less adventurous.

He found her in her room, alone, the room darkened by the big canopied
bed; it was a little chill.

He saw at once that to-day there would be no reading. His mother,
dismayed and distraught, was standing in the middle of the room, her
hand at her cheek, her eyes crowded with alarm.

So soon as she saw him she began: ‘No, David. . . . Leave me. . . . This
is too vile. . . .’ She was not near to tears: no, for once anger had
mastered her. She had even a certain grandeur, pulled to her full
height, massive, her gaze upon the door. Before he could wonder, someone
had come in, and at once a spate of words broke about the place; the
room crackled with fury.

He knew, without turning, that it was Alice Press; no need to question
that shrill voice that rose in a kind of sweeping tide of temper to a
scream.

‘And so you mean to banter me, madam—a fine figure before your own
children. Was I put here to direct them or no? It is no disparagement to
a woman, I suppose, that before all your household I should be told my
place and then left to find it by their easy insulting courtesy. Oh, no,
indeed—I am not to be averse to every slavish duty that a gentlewoman
can be put to, having been dragged from Doncaster by the heels, and then
flung into this muck-heap and cesspool to keep proper company with old
witches, who by rights should be stripped of every cloth on their backs
and then thrown to the river to let them sink or swim! Oh, no, you say,
I honour you ever more and more, but I insult you as I may, and as
convenience suits me. I do not remember to have ever had the pleasure of
witnessing your own rules of law and order in this house or any other.
You are quiet enough until the fit moment comes to abuse me properly,
and then you have words enough. . . . I can’t express the satisfaction,
truly, that it gives me to know the meaning of your feeling towards me,
and if I should go naked and be on my knees before you, that would give
you satisfaction, perhaps—you who have not your own children to order,
nor your husband to bed with you—yet you would teach _me_ my lesson and
my proper order in this house. . . .’

She paused for breath. David saw her now, her pale face crimson, her
hands clenched, her breast heaving.

‘I will not have you,’ Margaret Herries answered, ‘abuse my privileges.
It was not by my wish nor order that you were here. God knows I have
surrendered in these years many of my proper rights, and God He also
knows that I have suffered my own bitterness, and such it may be must
come to every woman, but yet I am mistress in this house.’

‘Mistress!’ Alice Press broke in, ‘and in a fine house! Mistress when
there is such a master here and a house where the mice and rats are the
true familiars. Mistress you may be in your own privacy, but mistress,
as the veriest hireling on this place knows, in no public fashion.
Mistress! Then who is master here? Know you your master and his company?
Ask your master his pleasure in Keswick and the drabs that he fumbles,
so that after barely a six months’ stay in this place his name is a
byword! Mistress——’

‘I will not,’ Margaret Herries broke in. ‘This is enough. I have
suffered your company long enough, but now it is you or I who go—and I
care not how soon!’

‘Go!’ Alice Press moved a step forward. ‘Yes, though we had been at the
same charity school and I had gone the round of neighbours asking for
bread, I would not go at your bidding. No, nor do aught else at your
bidding. Neither I nor anyone else in this place. You for a weak
trembling fool who have neither the courage nor the discipline to bid a
mouse go when you would wish it. Oh, I could tell you things, madam,
that would make your eyes sore. I have waited in patience, borne your
insults and laughed at your silly little pieces of pride, but now at
last my silence has lasted long enough. . . .’

Silence fell on the room. Francis Herries stood in the doorway, and
David moved towards his mother. He came close to her, scarcely knowing
that he did so, and suddenly he felt her trembling hand on his shoulder
and steadied himself that he might support it.

‘Well,’ Herries said quietly, looking about the room, ‘here is a
scramble . . . the whole house shares in it.’

For once Margaret Herries was not cowed. Her hand tightening on David’s
shoulder, her voice trembling ever so lightly, she replied to him:

‘Mrs. Press has some complaint that I have ordered her unjustly before
the servants. She has been impertinent . . .’

David saw, and triumphantly, that it was the other woman who was afraid.
In a voice that was strangely stilled after its earlier shrillness,
looking straight at Herries, forgetting, it would seem, that there was
any other in the room, she answered:

‘I have my place here, a place that you have appointed me. Your wife has
forgotten . . .’

Herries smiled.

‘Your place? No place unless you yourself fulfil it.’

It was possible that in that one quiet word she saw her sentence; she
had known, it might be, that for months it had been coming to her. It
might be that, beyond that again, she realised now her folly in
provoking this scene, in forgetting a patience that it had been, this
last year, no easy task to tutor her natural hot temper towards.

‘I have fulfilled it,’ she answered proudly. ‘It is you who have
neglected to keep me in it.’

‘That may well be,’ he answered lightly; ‘there is so much to be done
and little time to see to it all. And now I advise that you leave
us. . . . Wherever your place may be, it is certain that it is not in
this room.’

She would, it seemed, speak; then with another glance at him, her colour
now very white, she passed through the door.

He looked at his wife with a strange mixture of scorn and kindliness.

‘You should know better, Meg, than to suffer her impertinence . . . but
at least you shall not suffer it long.’

He went out. David felt still the pressure of his mother’s hand. She did
not move; then, at last, turned from him, went to the window and stood
there looking out. There was nothing that he could do—only he would
never speak to Alice Press again. Never! Not though his father whipped
him till the blood ran. With this high resolve he left the room, and
then, after a pause, the house. He hated it and everyone in it.

He found Benjamin and Benjamin found Caesar. No one prevented him; from
the outside court the house within seemed dead. No sound came from it.
It was strange that by merely closing a door you shut everything
off—anger, fears, greed, joys. Already, at his early years, it seemed
to him that one of the ways to secure happiness was to escape from
people, to be by yourself in the open.

He wasn’t happy as he found his way, past Moorcross, on to the main
path, but he was too young and too healthy to be unhappy for long. And
there was the consciousness that he was sharing now more in real
grown-up life than he had done in Doncaster. But why had his father
brought Alice Press with him from Doncaster? That was what he _could_
not understand. It was from her that all the trouble came, she who made
his mother unhappy, his father angry, Deb frightened, himself in a rage.
Were she gone, they would all be tranquil again. But _why_ had his
father brought her? Why had he kissed her in the inn? There was
something strange here that caused his heart to beat and his cheeks to
redden. Children then lived from the earliest years in contact with
great grossness of word and action. David almost from babyhood had been
aware of the physical traffic between men and women, had at the age of
seven seen a woman give birth to a child in the streets of Doncaster,
but he had as yet translated none of these physical acts to mental or
spiritual significance.

Life from the very first was for him far coarser and more brutal than it
would be for his great-grandchildren, but for that reason, perhaps, his
consciousness of it was purer and less muddled than theirs would be. In
any case he drove these things very swiftly from his mind as he drew out
from the Rosthwaite hamlet into the open country.

Open country, indeed, it was. At this time it was scarcely cultivated
save in a few fields round Seathwaite or Rosthwaite. It lay in purple
shadows with splashes of glittering sunlight, a lost land, untenanted by
man, no animal anywhere visible, dominated entirely by the mountains
that hemmed it in. To David’s right ran the path up to Honister, where
the mines were; this country was forbidden ground, for here all the
rascals and outcasts of the neighbourhood would congregate to scrape
among the mine refuse and then sell the scraps of plumbago to the Jews
in Keswick, who would meet them at ‘The George’ or ‘The Half-Moon’ and
then bargain with them. The stories were that titanic battles were
fought above Stye Head and on Honister between rival bands of robbers,
disputing their plunder, and it was true enough that many a time,
walking up Honister, you would find a dead man there, by the roadside,
his throat cut or a knife in his belly and often enough stripped naked.

For David, that road up to Honister was the most magical passage of all,
and one day he would investigate it, robbers or no robbers, to its very
heart; but to-day he was out to catch fish, and it was by the bridge
under Stye Head that he would catch them—were he lucky! It was not a
great day for fishing with this glittering sun and shining sky.

The farther he got from Herries the happier he became. Of late he had
been cluttered about with people. All of them—his father, his mother,
Deb, Mary, his cousins, Father Roche, the Press woman, old Mrs. Wilson
and her son, Peel and his boy—some of them he loved and some of them he
hated, but all of them hindered his perfect freedom.

He, he was wise enough even now to realise, would always be hampered by
people—you couldn’t be _free_ of people, nor did he want to be—but
there would be moments and days when you would be free, absolutely,
nakedly free, and, oh! how glorious they were!

It was such a moment now.

Caesar was no very magnificent steed, but he was a good enough pony, and
quite able to grasp his own moments of freedom. As they came deeper
under the hills the path was so rough and uncertain that David let him
pick his own way. The group of mountains that closed the valley in were
lovely in their wine-grape colour under a sky that had been a stainless
blue, but that now, in the fashion of these parts, was suddenly the
battlefield for two angry clouds, one shaped like a ragged wheel, the
other like a battering ram. The wheel was a thin grey edged with silver
and the ram was ebony. The empty valley—the little boy on the pony was
the only moving thing in the whole landscape—seemed to wait
apprehensively as the wheel and the ram approached one another. The sun
appeared to retreat in alarm, but the wheel stretched out a wicked hand
with swollen fingers and seized it—then the ram crashed down upon it.

The end of the valley was darkened although behind him, by Castle Crag,
the sun was in full glory, and the world blazed like a sheet of dazzling
metal. Within the shadow it was cold, and David, shouting to give
himself company, kicked Caesar forward.

He came now to three houses, brooding like witches at the side of the
rough path, quite deserted, it seemed, open, like many of the other
cottages, to the sky.

Before the third cottage stood three men and a girl. David felt his
heart beat at the sight of them. They were the wildest-looking men he
had ever seen. They were copies the one of another, seemingly of the
same height and the same age, the age maybe of his father, broad and
strong, and all with dark rough beards. The girl was only a baby,
younger than David, slight and dark like the men, but rosy-cheeked, and,
as David passed them, she was laughing. One of the men stepped forward
and stood in David’s way.

‘A fine day,’ he said.

David nodded. He was frightened, but he wouldn’t let anyone, not even
Caesar, know it. He wished, though, that the sun would come out again.

‘Where’st going?’

The man had a deep, rumbling, husky tone with a rasp in it.

‘To fish at the bridge.’

‘To fish at the bridge?’ All the men laughed.

‘Pass, little master.’ The man stepped back and ironically doffed a very
filthy and greasy hat. Then David, seeing the laughing eyes of the small
girl fixed upon him, smiled.

She had in her hand a small switch. She ran into the path, struck
Caesar’s buttocks and then, as he started forward, laughed with a shrill
crying tone like a bird. He looked back and saw her standing in the
middle of the path against the sun.

He cared nothing for girls—Deb wasn’t a girl, she was his sister—but
it did seem to him exciting and adventurous that this small girl should
be quite alone with these three wild men, and, apparently, happy with
them. She was perhaps the daughter of one of them. It might be that they
were some of the robbers who came down from Stye Head and murdered
defenceless people and returned. Well, there was nothing about him for
them to murder. He had a tin with worms in it, and a home-made fishing
rod and a few pence. He was safe enough.

The country now grew ever wilder and wilder. A rough, ragged stream,
swollen with the rains and the snow from the tops, rushed along over a
deep bed of slabs and boulders. Fragments of rock lay everywhere about
him here, so that he had to dismount and lead Caesar. Above his head the
two clouds had made truce and after a meeting had separated, one now in
the form of a ship that, lined with silver, sailed off into the blue,
the other dispersed into a flock of little ivory clouds that stayed
lazily, as though playing a game, in lines and broken groups. The sun
had burst out again and flooded all the land. David had already learnt
that, in this country, the sky was more changeable than in any other in
the world, that if you lived here your days were bound up with the sky,
so that after a while it seemed to have a more active and personal
history than your own. It became almost impossible to believe that its
history was not connected with yours, keeping pace with you, influencing
you, determining your fate. He had never considered the sky very greatly
at Doncaster, but in this world, it drove itself into your very heart.
The brilliant sun now struck sparks from every stone, while every
splutter of the stream against a boulder flung into the air a shower of
light. The whole valley glittered, while above it the mountains,
streaked like a wild beast’s skin with snow, were black.

He came to the bridge, let Caesar loose, clambered over the smooth wet
stones to the deep, green pool under the waterfall, chose his worm and
began to fish below the pool. There was shadow here from an overhanging
tree and the curve of the bridge. He was exceedingly happy. He had the
great gift of complete absorption in the task or play of the moment. He
was never to know the divided moods, divided loyalties of his father.
His character was not subtle, but steadfast, fearless, unfaltering. He
did not realise for how long he fished. He moved below the bridge and
then back again. He caught nothing. He never had a bite. The sun was too
bright. He sat, his legs apart, his eyes intently fixed on the water. A
shadow was flung. He looked up.

Leaning on the bridge, looking down at him very gravely was a pedlar
with a coloured hat and a sharp bright face. He had rested his pack on
the bridge’s wall.

‘A fine sun to-day,’ said the pedlar.

David nodded.

‘Too strong a sun for good fishing,’ said the pedlar.

David sighed. ‘That’s true.’ He scrambled up to the sward above the
stones. He looked at the pack.

‘Have you something for me to buy?’ he asked, smiling. He had some money
in his purse—money his father had given him—and it would be pleasant
to buy something for Deborah.

The pedlar shook his head.

‘Nothing for you.’ Then he felt in a pouch at his waist. ‘Do you fancy
boxes? I have a little box here . . .’ He fumbled, then brought out a
small silver box and gave it to David. His hand was nut-brown, with
long, thin, tapering fingers. It was a beautiful little box. On one side
was carved a picture of girls dancing round a maypole, on the other a
picture of gentlemen hunting.

David looked at it, then shook his head. ‘’Tis a beautiful box, but I
have not money enough.’

The pedlar smiled. ‘It is yours. Keep it until your marriage-day.’

‘Thank you,’ said David, dropping it into his pocket. ‘But I shall never
be married.’

‘You will be married,’ said the pedlar, ‘and have fine sons.’

‘How do you know?’ asked David, looking into his tin and seeing that the
worms that remained were few and poor. He would not fish any more. He
found bread and meat in his pocket and offered some to the pedlar, who
took more than his share and ate voraciously.

‘I know everything,’ said the pedlar. ‘I am the Devil.’

David believed him. He looked both wicked and gay as he stood there in
the sunlight, and Francis Herries had always told him that the Devil was
both these things.

‘I am not afraid of you,’ said David, laughing.

‘My father has always told me not to be afraid.’

‘I know your father,’ said the pedlar, licking his fingers after the
bread and meat and looking as though he would like also the piece that
David had in his hand. ‘Your father is an old friend.’

‘He is the finest man in the world,’ said David proudly. ‘Why will you
not show me the things that you have in your pack?’

‘I am weary of showing them,’ said the pedlar, yawning and displaying a
splendid row of sharp white teeth. ‘Time enough. You shall see them one
fine day.’

‘If you are the Devil,’ said David, who was always interested in
everything, ‘you can tell me where there is good fishing.’

‘There is good fishing everywhere,’ said the pedlar, ‘if you have
patience. You have patience. It will carry you through the
world—patience and courage, two stupid qualities but valuable.’

‘Do you live round here?’ David asked.

‘Here or anywhere. When you have lived for ever as I have, one place or
another is the same.’

‘Do you never grow any older?’ David asked.

‘Never,’ said the pedlar. ‘A wearisome business. Good day. We shall
often encounter one another. Keep the little box. I am not, in my
intentions, always unamiable as people say.’

He shouldered his pack, started up the Stye Head and was quite suddenly
lost in the sunlight.

David jogged back happily through the sunny afternoon. He took his time;
he saw no human being. The sun falls behind the hills like a stone over
this valley, leaving in the sky a long, wide strath of white and blue.
When David reached Herries the shadows were straddling giants across the
little stone court.

He found his father alone in the shadowed hall; he leant across the long
table, on which a map was spread. ‘He’s looking grand,’ David, who
relished him in his plum-coloured coat, thought, ‘and he has a temper.’
So, like a knowing puppy, he slipped quietly past the fading fire. In
the room above he heard Deborah’s funny little piping voice, singing to
herself or her baby. Beyond the leaded window the sky was a lovely pale
green like early spring leaves and the low spread of the land was purple
again as it had been in the morning. Against this gentle, pure light the
room was very dark, although two candles were lit.

His father saw him.

Without looking up from the map: ‘Where have you been, David?’

David told him. It might be that there would be a whipping or it might
be that there would be a game—you never could tell with his father.

‘Thou hast missed thine uncle, boy.’

David had nothing to say to that—as there was a pause he filled it.

‘I saw the Devil by the bridge.’

His father did not answer but suddenly raised himself.

‘David, come here.’ David came to him.

He put his arm round his neck. ‘David, I love no one but you—no one—no
one in all the world. And I hate your uncle. Remember this day, for on
it I surrender all wishes for a good union between your uncle and me.
Silly, patronising fool!’ He looked furiously about him at the table
which was clustered with a mess of things—tankards, a platter with
bread on it, a riding-whip, a velvet glove with a jewelled clasp. ‘I’ll
twist his neck for him, brother or no brother, an he comes this way
again. Aye, you should have seen your uncle riding his fine horse and
stepping over the muck and cobbles, he fat as an otter and red as an
infant’s bum. ’Tis his lady wife sent him to spy the land out—a fine
stretch she’ll be the wiser for his coming—a dark house, a dull woman
and his debauched good-for-nothing brother . . . I’ll warrant he’s sad
that he had me here—a fine tear on his famous reputation. And now that
I’m here I’ll stay. The place charms me, naked though it is. There’s
some ale for you, David. Drink to your good-for-nothing rump of a
father, naked-bottomed in a cesspool and pleasantly forgot by the gay
world.’

But David didn’t drink. He felt in his pocket and brought out the little
silver box.

‘The Devil gave me this,’ he said.

His father, his eyes angry yet good-humoured, wandered round the room
then came to it.

‘A pretty thing. And how did the Devil look?’

‘He was a pedlar. He said he knew you.’

‘Yes—there is a pedlar here I have spoken with. . . .’

His mind was away, then he caught his son to him and held him close.

‘My good brother’s son is a damned smug; and gives him no joy—I can
beat him there.’

He crooked his son’s chin upwards and looked at him. David gazed back at
him fearlessly.

‘Remember this day,’ his father said. ‘We shall be alone against the
world, you and I.’

CHINESE FAIR

Herries returned, one September morning, after his walk abroad, without
his coat. It had been one of his finest, the plum-coloured coat laced
with silver. He walked into the house in his white sleeves, and the old
witch, Mrs. Wilson, leaned over the top of the stairs and smiled. She
never laughed. ‘You’re grand without your coat,’ she said. They seemed
to have a kind of understanding, the two of them. He, as did all the
valley, believed her to be a witch. He thought none the worse of her for
it. He was happy this morning like a boy. It was a bright fresh morning,
with clean white clouds leaning negligently on the hills. With the
beauty and the youth and the kindly look that he had when he was happy,
he was a good sight for an old witch. And she was no misanthrope. Life
was too busily interesting for her to despise mankind.

‘I’m going to the Fair,’ he said like a boy.

She nodded her head, put out her long brown hand, and touched the white
linen of his sleeve.

‘You’re not to give t’coat,’ she said. ‘It’ll be remembered.’

He didn’t care whether it were remembered or no. Out on the Watendlath
path, looking up at a bright silver waterfall poised like a broken
ladder against the green cliff, he had seen by the stones of the beck a
dead man with his throat cut and a woman shivering beside him. A dead
man was no extraordinary sight; this man was naked save for his shirt,
and his white legs stretched stiffly as though they had been carved. The
woman did not cry nor ask for alms, but she shivered in the keen
September air. He did not speak to her, but obeying the impulse of the
instant, took off his plum-coloured coat and threw it over her trembling
shoulders. He strode back to the house. Seeing Benjamin in the yard, he
leaned from the window and bade him go and fetch the woman to the house.
Ten minutes later Benjamin returned to say there was no sign of woman or
man.

He did not care. He was too cheerful in spirit to be bothered by a dead
man or a shivering woman.

He sat in his sleeves at the window looking out on to the beautifully
coloured world, Glaramara plum-coloured like his coat, and the long
stretch of green valley.

He was like a schoolboy about this Fair. It was an accidental
chance-by-night Fair for Keswick. It had been intended for Kendal and
then for Carlisle, a motley company of entertainers and rogues and
rascals travelling slowly to Scotland.

But the smallpox was savage this summer in Kendal, and so they had
changed to the smaller town. In the past Keswick had had few Fairs but
its own. It was too small a place. The chartered Fair on the 2nd of
August for the sale of leather, and the Cattle Fairs on the first
Thursday in May and on each Thursday fortnight for six weeks after; on
the Saturday nearest Whitsuntide and Martinmas for hiring servants, and
on the first Saturday after the 29th of October for the sale of cheese
and rams. Saturday the year through was market-day for provisions and
corn.

But these Fairs were local, and business was their purpose. This present
Fair was the maddest, wildest thing in Keswick’s memory. It would be
generations before the week of it would be forgotten. They said, too,
that there was a company of Chinese people travelling with the Fair, and
they wore strange clothes, such as had never been seen in that
neighbourhood, and they juggled with gold balls and swallowed silver
swords, and had an old man with them three hundred years of age. It was
always afterwards called the Chinese Fair.

But it was not of the Fair that Herries was now thinking as he sat at
the window. He was thinking of how well satisfied he was with this
place. He had been here full two years, and his strange instinct that
had driven him here had been right. He already loved the valley, and had
even now caught some of the sense of its intimacy that led its
inhabitants to cling to it with an obstinacy and stubbornness that made
them a byword for the rest of the world. It was said that the men of
Borrowdale were so stupid as to be scarcely human, and that they did
such idiotic things, like building a wall to keep the cuckoo in their
valley, that they must be half-witted—that they never stirred from
their valley, that some of them had never even seen Keswick, that they
spoke a strange language of their own and were like men in a dream.

Herries had heard how the people in Keswick and from Newlands and St.
John’s and the rest mocked and gibed, but he knew now what it was that
held the men of Borrowdale: although he was not yet one of them (they
were greatly suspicious of newcomers), one day he would be. Something
was in his blood that was in their blood: it was a doom, a judgement,
the fulfilment of a prophecy.

He thought of other things too, as he sat there. He was well pleased
that he had cut himself off from his brother and his brother’s family.
Since that day when Pomfret had ridden over to Herries he had never set
foot in his brother’s house. Margaret and the children had visited—he
did not care whether they did or no—and when he met Pomfret in Keswick
he talked with him, but he had never been within his brother’s door.

He loved his pride, his fierce intolerance. He cherished it, fed it,
adored it. It had been one of his fears, on coming to live in Herries,
that perhaps he would find his brother a better fellow than he had
thought he was, and so would be forced to see him and keep company with
him because his heart drove him.

That was why, on the first evening at the inn, he had worn his finest
clothes—because that might annoy his brother, and then Pomfret would
appear less pleasant than he was. And so in the event it had been. Now
he cherished his scorn of his brother—it was a fine silver flower in
his coat.

The thing, however, of which he was mainly thinking now was what he
should do to be rid of Alice Press, for rid of her he would be. Although
so reckless a man, he knew, as every imaginative Herries has always
known, that you can’t rid yourself of past deeds. Kill a fox, give your
coat to a trembling woman, drink of the water of Sprinkling Tarn, and
you are a doomed man. He was doomed because he had kissed Alice Press,
doomed because he had shot off that young fool’s ear in Doncaster,
doomed because on entering Herries he had put the right foot before the
left, doomed anyway and a thousand times a day; but to be bored, because
he was young and full of life, was a worse thing than to be doomed. And
he was bored by Alice Press, bored to the very hilt of his sword. He
thought now that he had always been bored with her, although there had
been, at the very first, a flashing moment of startling splendour. Now
he was bored with everything about her, from her heavy sallow face, her
long sad brooding gaze at him, her stealthy eagerness to be alone with
him, down to the paste buckles on her scarlet shoes, the scarlet shoes
that he had once bought for her on a Fair day in Doncaster, and that she
wore now in persistent petulant reminder. Moreover, she had been
insulting to Margaret, and he would have no one rude to Margaret but
himself. Yes, he must be rid of her, but how?

He looked out at the great shoulder of the hill. ‘How, old Glaramara?
You are old enough to know. Come and tell me your plan.’

As though in answer to his question, hearing a deep breath he turned
round to find Alice Press at his side.

She was very grand in black velvet, with a heavy silver chain and her
scarlet shoes.

She came close to him, and the scent that she used, a scent of roses,
stifled his nostrils.

‘Francis,’ she said, her large sombre eyes staring into his. ‘You will
take me to the Fair, will you not?’

‘No,’ he answered, smiling at her and patting her white hand. She drew
her hand away from the arm of his chair.

‘You promised me.’

‘I break my promise.’

‘You must not. I am bent to go. You have been unkind to me all these
months, and I have borne you no grudge. I knew that I could wait. To-day
it shall be like one of our old times.’

‘Old times never return,’ he answered her, looking at her with an
intentness that matched her own. How strange it was, this passing of
love! A never-ending marvel! At one moment the merest touch of the hand
is Paradise, at the next, dead flesh.

‘Have you not been selfish in this,’ she went on quietly, ‘and blind
too, perhaps? Because you are tired of loving me you think our
intercourse is at an end. But no intercourse is at an end when two have
loved one another as we have.’

‘Loved!’ he interrupted her. ‘Love and love! Do you call that love? I
have never known what love is. ’Tis a wonder that waits always round the
corner. If ever I do know, then I will be faithful. But _our_ love! My
dear, you use words too lightly.’

He hit her hard there, but she gave no sign. Her eyes did not quiver.

‘Of course you are faithless,’ she said. ‘I have always known that, but
I am not quite like the other women you have kissed. I always told you I
was not. You cannot rid yourself of me so easily.’

‘Can I not?’ He looked at her speculatively. ‘I have never been false to
you. I warned you not to come here. I told you what it would be. Go back
to Doncaster, my dear, and find a better man.’

That ‘better man’ hit her the hardest of all, because, although she
thought him rotten, he was yet better for her than any other man in the
world. A woman’s bitter fidelity is always the honestest thing she has.

‘Take me with you to the Fair to-day,’ she repeated, ‘and we will see.
I’ve made no request for months but have faithfully stayed in this
house, suffered every scorn at the hands of your wife, been hated by
your children, been faithful to your interests—now, to-day, you will
take me to the Fair.’

‘I will not,’ he answered, smiling up at her. ‘David is the only one who
goes with me.’

She turned past him and stood facing him, with her back to the window,
blotting out the scene as though she thought that the mountain, at which
he gazed so persistently, was her enemy.

‘Listen, Francis. You are a bad man but a fair one. Here is a bargain.
You have spoiled my life, shamed me before everyone, wrecked all my
prospects, but I will feel nothing for all this if you will give me this
day, one day as we used to have it, as we had it in Doncaster that Fair
day when you bought me these shoes.’ He knew that she was saying to
herself: ‘If I can but get him from this house and away with me as he
used to be, I can charm him again.’

He answered her unspoken thought. ‘You cannot charm me any more, not by
one day nor by twenty. It is over. All done. I never promised fidelity.
I never loved you. I have never loved anyone save my son. These things
are not for our asking, my dear. Nature is rough when she tosses us our
moods. “This one for you,” she says, “and this for you,” and no tears or
scarlet slippers will change her indifference. Blame no one. Life is not
understood by scolding.’ Then he went on very kindly. ‘Alice, go back to
Doncaster and forget me. There was that fellow—how was he named?
Matthew Priestly—he always loved you. He loves you, I doubt not, still.
Blow no more on these dead coals. Forgive my indifference. It is the
fault of neither of us.’

She saw something in his face that she understood. She gave him one long
look and then slowly went. An hour later he was riding with David to
Keswick. He could not quite rid his mind of her. Oddly enough it was now
in connection with David that he thought of her. David, ever since that
quarrel between the two women, had kept his vow. He had refused to speak
to Alice Press. The woman had taken it for the most part with a cold,
haughty indifference, as though she could not be disturbed by the
impertinence of a child, but yesterday there had been a scene. She had
demanded of Herries that he should make his son answer her. Herries had
ordered him. David, with set face and an odd little frown between his
brows that was his father’s own, had refused. Herries would whip him for
disobedience. David, his body drawn tight together, kept to his refusal.
He was stripped and whipped. Herries drew blood from his young son’s
white back, because he loved him so dearly and was so deeply bored with
Alice Press. David put on his shirt and jacket without a word.

‘And now will you speak to her?’ his father asked him.

‘No,’ said David.

Then his father kissed him and gave him some fine ointment for his back.
To-day it was as though this had never been. David was in perfect
happiness as he rode Caesar, laughing and chattering as he did sometimes
when he was excited, making Caesar gallop on the free turf of Cat Bells,
coming down into Portinscale as though he were heading a charge. The boy
was growing. There would soon come a time when he would judge with a
man’s thoughts. He was a fine boy, of a stiff, brave, honest character,
full of courage and obstinate. What would he think of his father?

The Fair was on the farther lake side of Keswick, on the broad meadows
that ran to the lake’s edge, not far from Pomfret’s grand house, and it
pleased Francis to think how greatly Pomfret must dislike to have all
this rapscallion world at his very door. Keswick, at this time, was a
town of one fair street and a huddle of filthy hovels. In the minor
streets and ‘closes’ the cottages, little houses and pig-sties were
thronged very largely with a foreign and wandering population—riff-raff
of every sort who came to steal plumbago from the mines or were
wandering their way northward, off the main route; these houses were
crowded with foul middens and encroached on by large open cesspools,
pig-sties and cow-sheds. The refuse stagnated and stained the air and
tainted the soil. Here were women of ill-fame, hucksterers, thieves,
many Jews who paid high prices for the stolen lead. At once on entering
the town you were in another world from the honest and independent
country of the statesmen and yeomen of the valleys—these statesmen who
for centuries had lived on their own land, their own masters, and owed
no man anything.

In the former year, 1731, in Keswick, out of a population of some twelve
hundred, nearly five hundred persons had died of smallpox, cholera and
black fevers. During the summer months the channels of ordure, the
cesspools, became intolerable, and in the lower parts of the town
respectable citizens could scarcely breathe.

The natural inhabitants of those parts, however, showed no discomfort
and made no protest.

On this fine morning the principal street was shining with its white
cobble-stones and a throng of people who pressed hither and thither,
giving themselves up with complete child-like abandon to the fun of the
occasion. The Fair had spread from its proper surroundings out into the
street, and David and his father had to push through the groups
surrounding booths and cheap-jacks and fancy quacks.

But the Fair itself, when they reached it, was a glory.

So many were the booths and stalls that the waters of the lake were
invisible. On every side were announcements of wonders.

‘Here is the Dancing on the Ropes, after the French and Italian fashion,
by a Company of the finest Performers that ever yet have been seen by
the whole World. For in the same Booth will be seen the two Famous
French Maidens, so much admired in all Places and Countries where they
come, for their wonderful Performance on the Rope, both with and without
a Pole; so far outdoing all others that have been seen of their sex, as
gives a general satisfaction to all that ever yet beheld them, to which
is added Vaulting on the High Rope and Tumbling on the Stage.’

And here again: ‘Here is to be seen a little Fairy Woman lately come
from Italy, being but Two Foot Two Inches high, the shortest that ever
was seen in England, and no ways Deformed, as the other two Women are,
that are carried about the streets in Boxes from House to House for some
years past, this being Thirteen Inches shorter than either of
them. . . . Likewise a little Marmozet from Bengal that dances the
Cheshire Rounds and Exercises at the word of Command. Also a strange
Cock, from Hamborough, having three proper legs, and makes use of them
all at one time.’

Here was a play announced in front of a booth all gay with crimson cloth
and gold tinsel—

‘An Excellent new Droll called _The Tempest_ or _The Distressed Lovers_.
With the English Hero and the Highland Princess, with the Comical
Humours of the Enchanted Scotchman, or Jockey and the three Witches.
Showing how a Nobleman of England was cast away upon the Indian Shore,
and in his Travels found the Princess of the Country, with whom he fell
in love, and after many Dangers and Perils was married to her; and his
faithful Scotchman, who was saved with him, travelling through Woods,
fell in among Witches, where between them is abundance of Comical
Diversion. There in the Tempest is Neptune with his Tritons in his
Chariot drawn with Sea-Horses, and Mairmaids singing. . . .’

And then the marvellous animals: ‘The true Lincolnshire Ox Nineteen
Hands high and Four Yards long, from his Face to his Rump, and never was
Calved nor never sucked, and two years ago was no bigger than another
Ox, but since is grown to this prodigious Bigness. This noble Beast was
lately shown at the University of Cambridge with great satisfaction to
all that saw him. . . .

‘The large Buckinghamshire Hog above Ten Foot long . . . the wonderful
Worcestershire Mare, Nineteen Hands high, curiously shaped, every way
proportionable; and A little Black Hairy Pigmey, bred in the Deserts of
Arabia, a Natural Ruff of Hair about his Face, Two Foot high, walks
upright, drinks a glass of Ale or Wine, and does several other things to
admiration; and the Remark from the East Indies; and the little Whifler,
admired for his extraordinary Scent.’

Although David did not know it, some of these same animals must have
been of an amazing age, because the celebrated Mr. Pinkeman had himself
shown them in the days of Queen Anne.

For David, however, hours must pass before he could take in any detail.
He did not know that already behind the colour and show there was
disgust and discontent on the part of the showmen, because the takings
were so small, and there was no one there but gaping country-fellows,
the discontent leading in the last day of the Fair to a free fight and
riot that spread, before all was over, into the heart of the town.

It all seemed to him so grand and magnificent that there had been
nothing in the world like it before. Walking close at his father’s side
he was caught up into a world of colour and scent—the faint September
blue held the flare of the fires that blazed upon roasting meat and
fish, popping corn and scented sweetmeats, the thick swaying tendrils of
smoke that crawled about the booths, the waving of coloured pennants,
the flaunting of flags, and, under this shifting roof of colour,
everything broke and mingled again, dogs nosing for food, naked children
sprawling in the mud, mummers in gold and blue, women, bare-breasted,
shrieking after their men, tumblers somersaulting, a monkey loosed,
dragging after him a silver chain, his face weary with age and
loneliness, three dwarfs in crimson hose, with huge heads, counting
money, a black woman, a yellow kerchief round her head, selling silver
rings, clowns, soldiers, girls dressed like angels with white wings, the
booths with the drum beating and shrill trumpets blowing, men stripped
to the waist, their skin pouring sweat, fighting before a shouting
crowd, everywhere eating and everywhere drinking, men tumbling women and
women fingering men—and through these crowds the countrymen, the
farmer, the dignified statesman, the gaping yokel moving like strangers,
suspicious, aloof, and gradually tempted by ale and women and silver, by
noise and food and curiosity, tumbling into the reeking tub and so
kicking and shouting and screaming like the rest as the sun went up the
sky.

Yes, hours passed. Somewhere, at some time, David had a sudden curious
vision of all the colour, reek and noise of the Fair parting like a
drawn curtain, and there in the clear space was the lake, misted yellow
under a misted sun, cool and still, the line of Cat Bells rising softly
above the woods on the farther side, the water still without a ripple,
very cool and sweet. Then it closed again, and the stench of roasting
meat and uncleanly bodies and painted boards melting in the heat of
fires and frying corn and burning wood swept over him again, bringing
with it into the very heart of his nostrils the whole pageant of bright
colour, purple and gold and saffron, and the odd wildness of a thousand
faces, eyes staring, mouths agape, and a roar of bells and whistles,
shouts and curses and cries, the neighing of horses and barking of dogs
and the shrill human scream of a crimson-pated cockatoo.

He was aware then that he had lost his father. He stood for a moment
dismayed. On every side figures were pushing against and around him; now
someone would run past him shouting; now two singing, falling from side
to side, would lurch drunkenly his way; now with a cry, as though it had
come from the ground itself, there would be a rush from a whole group;
and all of this dreamlike—a flash of a sword, a trembling coloured
flag, a creaking board of a booth, a ringing silver bell, the scream of
the crimson-pated cockatoo, the wail of the lost monkey dragging his
silver chain, a man bending a woman backwards against a boarded trestle,
a naked muddied baby crying for its mother, all in a dream; where the
clear, tranquil, golden-misted lake was, there was reality.

But he had no fear; he would see his father again; it was fine to be
independent in a noisy world and to hold your own against the Devil. So,
looking around him, he saw that he was before the very booth where he
had most set his heart, the booth where the Chinamen were. On the
outside of the booth a Chinese curtain hung in brilliant splashes of
gold and red, a temple, a grove of golden bells, soldiers in armour, a
bridge of blue, and in front of the curtain a Chinaman with a yellow
face and an ebony pigtail was inviting everyone to enter. A bell
clanged, the Chinaman called out in a shrill voice and at the same
moment the thick pushing crowd shoved forward. David was caught in it,
carried off his feet; he was pressed against smelling clothes and warm
sweating flesh; he clutched, that he might not fall, at a man’s waist
and held to it; his fingers stuck to the damp waist-belt and his arm was
driven into a soft belly. For a moment he was almost under a dozen feet,
then lifted up again on the sheet of a thousand smells and so almost
hurled into the inside of the booth. He did not know whether he should
pay money or no, he had lost his breath and found himself enclosed
within the thick arm of a huge country-fellow, black-bearded, bare at
the neck; their sense of one another was instantaneous, and the
black-bearded man laughed, standing him in front of him, pressing him
back against his chest, his hot naked arm against David’s cheek.

He could see where he was. He was high on some raised boards. Everything
around him was quiet. The noise of the Fair had been shut out. On every
side of him the people with staring eyes, speechless, stood waiting. A
little empty stage was in front of him and above it some curtains idly
flapped.

All his senses were centred on this empty stage. It became to him full
of omen and suspense. What was about to happen? Who would come there? A
very ancient man came with a long face of yellow parchment. He wore a
long stiff garment of purple brocaded silk. He sat, quite silently and
quite alone, on a little round stool. He was motionless, carved in
colours against the dark shadows of the flapping tent. He looked neither
to right nor left, was unaware of the sweating crowd. Perhaps he was the
Chinaman who was three hundred years old. If you were three hundred
years of age you would not pay attention to any crowd; you would have
seen so many.

Then the curtains parted, two young men in gold trousers, stripped to
the waist, their bodies glistening, came and threw into the air coloured
balls. They threw up a dozen balls at once, and the balls, green,
yellow, red, made whirls of colour above the head of the old man who
never moved.

Then there came two short fat men with very yellow bodies; they were
clad only in loin-cloths. Standing in a corner of the stage they began
silently to wrestle.

Then six young men came in trousers of gold and jackets of silver; they
had poles up which they climbed; they threw ropes to one another and
with pointed red slippers on their feet walked on the ropes. Lastly a
number of little yellow-faced children, also dressed in bright, shrill
colours, ran silently forward, spread their legs and their arms and
stood in a pyramid: the child who climbed to the top and stood balancing
there with his little feet seemed only a baby with tiny black eyes and a
doll’s pigtail.

Now all of them—the young men with the balls, the naked wrestlers, the
men balancing on the ropes, the pyramid children who suddenly melted to
the floor and were turning like bright bales a hundred somersaults and
cart-wheels—were moving ceaselessly round the old man who sat
motionless on his little stool, never flickering, you could be sure, an
eyelid. Faster and faster they turned, but always without a sound, and
as they moved the tightly packed crowd moved with them: the crowd began
to sway and to murmur: everyone was smiling: the black-bearded
countryman who smelt of good fresh dung put his arm tight round David’s
neck, pressing his body to him. They were all smiling as though they
were in a dream, and it must have seemed to many of them that they too
were tossing balls into the air, turning somersaults, climbing poles,
balancing on ropes. Their bodies must have appeared free to them and
clean and strong: the ordure and the filth, the daily toil, the cruelty
and sickness and pain, the darkness and rain and cold freezing nights,
the life with animals and the wrestle with the hard ungrateful soil, the
penury and ignorance and darkness, the loneliness of rejected lovers,
the injustice of tyrannous masters, the narrow, constrained horizons,
the proud brutalities of a swollen-headed upper class against whom they
struggled dumbly, whom one day—and that day was not far distant—they
would conquer—all these hard things fell away, the sky was bright and
clear, the air fresh like crystal, all for a moment was joy and
happiness in a free world where it was always day.

As for David he could see nothing but the silent old man sitting on his
stool. The old man seemed to be staring directly into David’s eyes.
However David moved his head he could not escape that old man. He began
to be frightened. He wanted to run away. The old man appeared to have a
message especially for him. In another moment something terrible would
happen. His father was in danger. And it spread beyond the moment—all
his life he would remember that old Chinaman, and whenever he remembered
him he would shiver with apprehension. Life was dangerous, and you could
only know how dangerous it was when you sat quite still and listened,
waiting for a sound to break.

Anyway, he must go. He must find his father.

He wriggled away from his black-bearded friend, then, dropping down from
the raised boards, pushing through legs and arms, shoving with his head
now this way, now that, at one instant stifled by the human stench, at
another brought up against a solid body that would never move again, at
last he was by the flap of the tent and tumbled into the free air,
leaving behind him, it seemed, a crowd hypnotised, in a trance, a
dream. . . .

He was in the open air again and frantically hungry. It must be
afternoon. The sun was high in the sky.

So, looking rather desolate and half lost, his father, Francis Herries,
saw him. Herries was a little drunk and soon would be more so. Somewhere
in the heart of the Fair where they were bargaining about cattle he had
discovered an old woman with a store of wine. She sat under an awning,
on either side of her a cask of wine. A strange woman, very fat, with a
purple face. She did not seem to want to sell her wine, but sat there
idly. Once and again she broke into a strange raucous song in a deep,
rumbling voice. She ladled the wine out of the casks into long, thin
glasses: the wine was a shilling a glass, Portuguese on one side of her,
Florence the other. Herries drank the Portuguese. What was it? He
neither knew nor cared. Was it White Vianna or Passada or Barabar?
Carcavellos or Ribadavia? He drank many glasses. The old woman did not
speak to him nor he to the old woman. After that everything entertained
him. He had always been very easily amused by little things, and there
was something in him that liked the stench and the common crowd and the
press of animals human and other——

He watched for a long while two men who, drunk with gin, tumbled about
in the mud together. Close beside him was a fellow selling medicines.
The two drunkards, suddenly weary, kissed one another and lay there in
the mud head by head, looking up at the sunny sky.

The quack, long, thin and brown, like a gnarled tree-branch, with a high
black hat—‘Here’s a plaister will cure old Ulcers and Fistulas,
Contusions, Tumours and any Dislocations or Hurts, and when it has
performed Fifty Cures ‘twill be ne’er the worse but still keep its
Integrity.’

He moved leisurely, looking for a pretty face. Where were all the pretty
women? Here at least not one. The country girls hanging on the arms of
their lovers were each more blowzy than the other. There seemed to be
none of his own class here. What was it that gave him a sudden sense of
freedom so that he was happy as though he had thrown off bonds?

All these strange faces interested him, wizened and twisted and swollen;
he could throw off his fine clothes, put on these tinsel rags and go
wandering with them, drinking, wenching. . . . Then looking about him he
saw his small son. With a pang of reproach, oddly sharp as he saw his
air, half defiant, half frightened, he cursed himself for the rottenest
parent. To leave that child in such a place, at such a time! And yet he
did not move at once towards him, but watched him, loving him, proud of
him, sturdy and self-reliant among all the oddities, the shouting, the
flaming fires. Whatever occurred that boy would not cry out, but would
stand on his courage to the last, letting endurance father him were no
other father there. And was not that because he had no spirit of
imagination? Imagination was the devil. Let your fancy move and there,
by that booth where the boxing was, you could see the sun roll down from
the sky and sweep them all—pimp and trollop, bully and jade, monkey and
dwarf, Indian and Chinaman—with its fiery heat, screaming into
perdition. As he one day would go. But David would not stir, not till he
felt his duty was done.

Then he moved forward and was happy to see the boy’s pleasure spring
into his eyes at sight of him.

‘Did you think me lost?’

‘No, father. I’ve been in the Chinaman’s tent.’

‘And what did you see there?’

‘There was an old man, they say he is three hundred years old, and young
men throwing balls.’

Then he added rather wistfully:

‘Father, I’m hungry.’

‘Come, we’ll eat then.’

They moved through the packing crowd and came to a kind of temporary
hostelry. It had a grander, larger front than the booths, and, inside,
there were long trestle tables with benches stretched on the grass and
at the far end a defended fire with a grid. The place was very full with
people eating and drinking, and many were already drunk, singing and
shouting. David and his father found places at the end of the tent near
the fire. A stout jolly man with an apron and a white cap asked them
what they would have. There was Pudding and Roast Beef, Boiled Beef and
Ox Tripe, Pigeons, well moistened with butter, without larding.

‘Pudding and Boiled Beef,’ said David. It was then that he saw that his
father had been nobly drinking. He was too thoroughly a boy of his time
to be disturbed by drunkenness, but, during these last weeks, he had
grown greatly and taken a more manly place in the world, and in nothing
more than in his attitude to his father. His father was weak where he
himself would never be. He did not know this with any priggish sense of
virtue: it came to him simply that there were times when he must look
after his father just as there were times when he must look after
Deborah.

He was a sort of guard to them, not because he was better than they—all
his life and through everything that happened he would always look up to
them, but only because he loved them.

He was uneasy now, as looking about the tent he felt that in some way or
another this was not a place for his father to be riotous in. The men
and women around them were of mixed kinds: there were some sober and
solid yeomen and townsmen, eating their meat with grave seriousness,
with the Cumbrian air of guarding their own; there were some rascals of
the Fair’s own company, one of them in a shabby gay jacket of gold
thread, another like a pedlar in a crimson cap (he reminded David of the
Stye Head Devil who gave him the little box) with a small gibbering
monkey sitting on his shoulder. With them were two loose women very
gaudily attired, laughing and shouting. One of the women fondled the
pedlar, thrusting food into his mouth. Near his father was a group of
better-class people. They might be townsmen from Kendal or Penrith. One
was very stout with a double chin and little mouse-eyes. He was rather
drunken already and spilt his meat on his green velvet waistcoat.
Another was a little man, thin as a spider, with a shrill feminine
voice. He was over-handsomely dressed with an elaborately curled wig, a
full-bottomed coat of bright blue, and many rings on his fingers. He was
also drunken, and said many times over that he wanted a full-bosomed
woman to go to bed with, that he might wake in the morning and find her
near to him.

Herries, as was his way when he was drunk, had become very grand and
proud. The wine that now was brought to him, added to the wine that he
had already had, increased his grand dignity. David, who very soon had
eaten all that he wanted, began to be unhappy and to plan some way of
escape out into the air again.

Glancing here and there he knew that there were a number in the tent who
had recognised his father. He had long known that there was much
curiosity about his father and his father’s family, as to why he had
chosen to exile himself in Borrowdale, as to his dangerous liking for
women, as to his mingling with anyone he met and caring nothing for the
quality of his company, as to his having a fine mistress hidden away
there in Herries and his flaunting her full in his wife’s face—David
knew that all these things were said and that already a queer chancy air
had grown about the building of Herries, and that they had all become
the more suspicious to the outside world because on their first coming
they had sheltered a Roman Catholic priest (and who knew on what errand
he had vanished less than a year ago?), and had under their roof the
most famous witch in Borrowdale.

All this was in David’s mind and consciousness. His determination was
set on getting his father away before some open scandal occurred, and
through all the murk and smell of the crowded tent, stinking of meat,
spilt drink and unclean bodies of men, he saw the old Chinaman’s eyes,
that Chinaman who was three hundred years old and sat like an image.

His father was very haughty, ate and drank without speaking to anyone.
He seemed like a god to his son, sitting there so grand and handsome
with his thin, brown face, his clear eyes and the silver waistcoat with
the ruby buttons.

The spidery man in the full wig buried his nose in his glass, and then,
in his shrill high voice, bowing to Herries, said:

‘A drink with you, sir.’

Herries drank.

‘I am from Kendal,’ the little man went on, while the very stout fellow
laughed immoderately. ‘I have come hither to see the pretty women, but
by Jesus there are none!’

‘There are several,’ Herries replied, eyeing him severely.

‘There are several.’ The little man tittered: ‘You are fortunate, sir.
My name is Rosen—may I be honoured by knowing yours, sir?’

‘My name,’ said Herries very proudly, holding up his glass and looking
at the beads of colour in the yellow wine, ‘is Charles Henry Nathaniel
Winchester, Duke of the Pyrenees and the district of the Amazon.’

Mr. Rosen became very serious. His little brow was puckered.

‘I understand you, sir—a secret, between gentlemen.’

‘There are women here,’ said Herries, ‘but no gentlemen—all the
gentlemen are at the lake’s bottom feasting with the mermaids.’

‘I have heard,’ said Mr. Rosen, who realised only the last word of
Herries’ sentence, ‘that a mermaid was indeed seen off the northern
coast of Scotland a month back. I was told by one who had read of it. I
could go to bed with a mermaid,’ he hiccuped, and looked gravely
distressed, ‘were her tail not too long. Could one choose one’s
mermaid?’

It was then that a terrible thing occurred. David, more and more
restless, seeing that the tent was now fully crowded, that several had
moved near to them and were listening, had his eye on the tent’s door.
Through it he could see a patch of bright sunlight, a woman dancing on a
tub and many figures passing in shadow. It was clear by the door.
Someone entered, a woman, Alice Press.

He stared, first thinking that he was blinded by the sunlight, then that
he had mistaken some other woman of a like figure for her—there was no
mistake. She was wearing the black velvet dress of the morning. He could
see the silver chain lying against it. And she wore the scarlet shoes.
She stood quite by herself, staring about her. She looked up and down
the tent. Then she saw Herries. She saw him, looked full at him, then
very slowly began to move up the tent.

David’s eyes were fixed. He had become an image of apprehension and
fear. He could see only the green waistcoat of the fat man and that down
it there was trickling a little stream of wine, while his big belly rose
and fell in spasms of laughter. He did not look at his father, but he
knew, quite suddenly, that his father had seen her. He felt for a moment
his father’s hand touch his shoulder, then he heard Alice Press’ voice.

‘I have come, you see. Will you give me something to eat?’

There was a place at Herries’ other side. She took it with great ease
and composure, but David, who, because of his detestation of her, had
her in his very bones, knew as though it had been himself that she was
suffering from throbbing nervousness and a devilish fear.

Herries, his face very stern, answered her quietly.

‘Yes, since you are come. . . . What will you have?’

She ordered something from the smiling man with the apron, and,
attempting a perfect ease, looked about her. She must have seen at once
that no women of any quality were there, but only drabs and Fair ladies.
All stared at her. At the door-end of the tent a thick rabble was
quarrelling and laughing at its own affairs, but at the fire-end all
eyes were upon her.

She smiled swiftly at Herries, and then began to talk.

‘A kind fellow from Seathwaite brought me. I watched him passing. ’Twas
dull at the house and the day bright, so I thought that I would venture
for an hour. But I am hungry and ’tis three o’clock. ’Tis a gay Fair and
of a size for a little town, as large as the Doncaster Fair. There are
things to buy, I can be sure—will you buy me something, Francis?’ She
put her hand for a moment on his arm, laughing in his face. ‘Yes,’ he
answered slowly, ‘I will buy you something.’ He did not look at her, but
stared in front of him as though he were lost in thought.

Her food was brought, and she began nervously to eat. The heat of the
tent, her fear and excitement had brought colour to her sallow cheeks.
The black dress suited her and her full half-revealed bosom. The little
spidery man in the blue coat regarded her with all his eyes, his mouth
open, the stout man also.

She continued talking:

‘And will you take me to see the sights? There is a Chinaman three
hundred years old and a play . . .’ She broke off. She was gathering
courage. ‘’Tis time you showed me the world again.’

Herries, for the first time since she had come, looked at her.

‘I will show you the world. It would be ungracious did I not when you
have come so far. First you shall eat . . .’

It was then that the little Mr. Rosen of Kendal caught up his courage
and spoke to her. He raised his glass.

‘May I drink to you, madam? You honour us by your company.’

She smiled at him, raising her glass, but her nervous thoughts were fast
on Herries.

‘We are all friendly together here,’ she said. ‘Pleasant company. Can
you tell me, sir, whether the Chinaman has truly three hundred years?’

‘They say so.’

‘A very Methuselah. Are you an inhabitant of Keswick?’

‘My town is Kendal.’ The little man’s eyes were now bursting from his
head at the sight of the lady’s opulence and beauty.

‘’Tis a finer town than Keswick.’

‘Larger. ’Tis not for me to say that ’tis finer. We who are citizens of
it have our private conceit.’ He sighed, swelled out his chest, felt for
the hilt of his sword.

After a little she looked at Herries. ‘I have done eating,’ she said.
‘Will you take me to the sights?’

Herries drank his glass, looked at it after, with a firm hand, he had
placed it on the table, then turned to her gently.

‘Alice,’ he said, ‘as you have taken this on yourself so you take the
consequences. When we leave this tent we part. . . . You do not return
to Herries.’

His voice was quiet, but he had not wished especially to lower it. Mr.
Rosen and his stout friend, and indeed all at that end of the table,
heard the words.

The colour in her face deepened. She put her hand to her bosom, an
action of hers that David knew well.

‘Come, then,’ she said, half rising, ‘this is too public a place . . .’

‘Nay.’ He put his hand on her arm, holding her down. ‘You have chosen
it. Before we move hence you must tell me that you understand—at the
tent door we part. You go no more to Herries.’

Her rage at the public insult—her temper was always beyond her
command—flushed her cheeks. She, too, had in these ten minutes been
drinking to give herself control. David saw her white hand pressed with
desperate force on the table until the blue veins stood out.

‘Be ashamed,’ she murmured. ‘In this place. . . .’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘In this place. I want your assurance.’

‘No, then,’ she cried, her voice suddenly rising. ‘You bought me. You
shall keep me.’ It was odd how, with her anger and the freedom from the
drink, the commonness that was in her blood suffused, like a rising
colour, all her body and spirit.

‘I bought you. Yes,’ he answered quietly. ‘Then I can sell you again.’

Everyone around them was silent. The stout man, very drunk, rolling his
head, suddenly exclaimed:

‘Aye, and who would not have her, this beautiful lady—though she cost
him—his—his house and—and—horses?’

But David saw that she was very afraid.

‘Francis, you have been drinking. I did wrong to come—I confess it—I
will do all that you wish. But not here—not in this place. . . .’

But he went on steadily.

‘You have said it. I have bought you, and now, our bargain being ended,
I will sell you again.’ He fixed Rosen with his eye: ‘You, sir, how much
will you give me for this lady?’

Several men murmured shame, but everyone here was very drunken: there
was some laughter, and a man began to sing a song. A woman very gaudily
dressed and painted had come over and, leaning her bosom on the stout
man’s back, eagerly watched the scene.

‘You insult the lady,’ little Rosen began, half rising from his seat and
feeling for his sword: then something in Herries’ face constrained him,
and he sat down again.

‘I am indeed serious,’ said Herries sternly. ‘This lady and I are weary
of one another and would part, but she is mine and I would have
compensation. You, sir,’ staring into Rosen’s face, ‘how much will you
give for her?’

Alice Press rose—‘I will pay you for this . . . in good coin. . . .’
She made as though to go, but he rose also, laid his hand again on her
arm, then, his voice clear so that all heard, said: ‘This lady is for
sale—for the one who will bid the highest.’

Cries broke out—some were laughing, some swearing, most too drunken to
understand the affair; the garish woman laughed loudest of all.

A man said: ‘Five silver shillings.’

Rosen, fuddled but struggling, in his funny feminine voice screamed:
‘You are a filthy dog—you shall be caned for this——’ Nevertheless he
could not take his eyes from Alice Press. His whole body hung towards
her.

Herries answered him quietly.

‘Come, sir, will you give me forty shillings?’

‘He’ll give forty shillings . . .’ some drunken voice murmured like a
refrain. The garish woman cried shrilly: ‘More than she’s worth, the
bitch.’

Something happened then to Rosen. With a frenzied gesture he plunged his
hand in his pocket, flung down on the table a heap of silver coin, then
leaned forward, his face almost in Herries’.

‘I’ll take her. I’ll take her. She shall come if she’s willing—I’ll
care for her—zounds and the devil, I will—an she’s willing.’

The money struck the table, and some of the coins, like live things,
danced in the air, springing to the ground. A heap, shining there, lay
before Herries.

‘Have her then,’ he said. ‘I drink to you both.’

As he did so Alice Press turned to him and struck the glass from his
hand. The wine splashed in his face.

She said something to him that no one could hear. Then clearly:

‘You shall never be free from this.’

She looked about her once, proudly, and David, who still hated her,
nevertheless at that moment mightily admired her.

Then she turned, brushed through the men and was gone.

Mr. Rosen rose and hurried after her.

Herries picked up one of the pieces of silver, looked at it intently,
then placed it in the deep pocket of his coat.

Quietly, without any haste, he went out. David, his head up, his eyes
shining, followed him.

THE SEA—FATHER AND SON

It was on a windy April night in the year 1737 that David and his father
arrived at a new understanding together. The manner of it was on this
wise.

The years that had passed since the very public exit of Mrs. Alice Press
had suffered this and that figure to rise for a moment before their
indifferent background, and then to be whirled like a tumbled leaf into
windy space.

There had been the cheerful, friendly Gay, who, dying of an inflammation
of the bowels in three days, had drawn this unusual sincerity from Mr.
Pope: ‘He was the most amiable by far, his qualities were the
gentlest. . . . Surely if innocence and integrity can deserve happiness
. . .’

It was Mr. Pope’s profound opinion that they could not.

On the 13th of March, 1734, one Mr. William Bromley had proposed that
‘leave be given to bring in a Bill for repealing the Septennial Act, and
for the more frequent meeting and calling of Parliaments’—and the
echoes of that appeal were one day to affect even the remotest
hearthstones of Borrowdale.

Other figures, oddly contrasted, beckon for a moment on the mirror.
Bolingbroke, cursing everyone save himself, takes boat for France on a
windy June morning; then Louis of France, making rude gestures, fingers
at nose, that he may irritate, polished sophisticate that he is, the
barbarian Stanislaus; and a heavy-jowled, good-tempered cynic is
fingering women in a gilded London bedroom and refusing most resolutely
to be irritated by either Louis or Stanislaus. He has seen, with a
smile, the packing of Bolingbroke’s boxes, has sighed and smiled
cynically again because Nature that leaves so many dullards lagging on
the stage has taken the great Arbuthnot after only sixty-eight years of
noble brilliance, has snorted with his closest friend and intimate,
snuff-taking Queen Caroline, over the rude, personally insulting
despatches posted indignantly by His Gracious Majesty, the Emperor
Charles the Sixth, and has turned with a grunt back to his women and
bottles again, strong in this policy of masterly inactivity, this
heavy-jowled, good-tempered, massive-bellied cynic Walpole.

One more, before the mirror darkens and the months hurry to a more
desperate destiny—a bright-cheeked, rosy boy receiving his baptism of
fire at the siege of Gaeta, aged only fourteen, Don Carlos touching the
boy’s arm with his long hand, and thus angering Caroline and George in
their London palace so that they must send to Walpole to soothe
them—that boy Charles Edward, whose happiest moment, maybe, is just
this when, from that little close-walled flowered garden, he looks
across, a fire of ambition at his heart, to a thin line of smoky
plum-coloured hills.

In Borrowdale, at Herries, David and his father, on the morning of the
10th of April, 1737, were preparing to ride over to Ravenglass to spend
several nights with brother Harcourt.

David, who was almost eighteen now, and had broadened, strengthened,
darkened, so that you would not know him for the same little boy who had
pretended to sleep in the four-poster at the Keswick inn, knew nothing
of Gay or Arbuthnot, of _The Beggar’s Opera_ or the malicious devilries
of Mr. Pope; but he knew by now a great deal about Borrowdale.

He knew the name of every Statesman in the valley and the faces and
bodies of most of the humans there. He knew the innermost, intimate
history of every possible fishing locality, the name of every bird, the
lair of every fox. He had seen a wolf round the Glaramara caves, he had
seen a golden eagle fly in the sun above Castle Crag, he had shared
(without shame or shrinking—that sensitiveness did not belong to his
time) in nearly every bull-baiting, dog-fighting, cock-fighting that the
valley had to offer. He had learnt something of the spinning and
weaving, and there had not been a Christmas Feast, a stanging at Twelfth
Night, a pace-egging at Easter, a late summer rushbearing, a Hallowe’en
or a local wedding at which he had not played his part. He was as
popular (although he did not know it and would not have thought of it
had he known it) as his father was not.

His whole young life had become absorbed by this valley world and by the
close history of his own immediate family. They had been the seven
happiest years of his life. He was a boy no longer. He was on the
threshold of his manhood.

This journey to Ravenglass was to show him this. He had been
anticipating eagerly a visit to his uncle Harcourt ever since he had
first come to Herries. Uncle Harcourt was to be different, different
from anyone he had seen or known. Harcourt had lived in the great world,
he cared for the Arts, he was brilliantly read, a scholar, he could
answer many of the questions that, for years now, David had been longing
to ask.

For, although he loved everything that had to do with the outside world,
he had, too, an intellectual eagerness that was perhaps the growth from
seeds that Father Roche had sown. This had not been satisfied.

Simple, gentle little Robert Finch had come and taught the three of them
what he could. That had not been a great deal. From the outside world
the family at Herries had been more and more shut off.

Here, in spite of his externally happy life, lay the reason for the
apprehension and misgiving that were in David’s heart. For himself all
might be well, for his family and for those whom he loved, all, as he
very thoroughly knew, was not well at all.

The clouds had begun to gather after the scandal of the Chinese Fair.
That scandal had been in its effects infinitely more public than seemed
at the time possible. It had, indeed, been shameful enough for himself,
and its effect on him had altered the whole balance of his character.
Although five years now intervened he could yet see and feel every
detail of it, the close and ill-smelling tent, the leaping fire, the
genial host, the garish woman with the painted face, the bright blue
coat of the little shrill-voiced man, the silver coins lying on the
table, the broad stout hand of Alice Press stark on the table-board—but
it had been, it had seemed, a private drama for himself and his father.
For months he had caught no outside word of it. All that they had known
at home had been that Alice Press was gone, and for ever: that had been
relief enough.

Then, even to his boy’s ears, bit by bit and piece by piece the story
had come to him: the Peel boy knew it, Benjamin knew it, at last, as he
found, his mother and his sisters knew it. It was a story incredibly
distorted. It seemed to him, when at last he met it face to face, to
have no relationship to the truth. Of course he hotly defended his
father—but the mischief was done. Here was the man who had sold his
woman in public for ‘thirty pieces of silver.’ Even to that country
tradition in that uncouth time the event was memorable.

It clothed his father with a kind of ‘apartness’—yes, even for himself.
His father had always been for him like no other man, but that had been,
in his youngest years, a difference of glory. Now it was a difference of
peculiarity.

His was a character that must face everything truly and honestly as it
came to him, and now he must face this—that his father could do
shameful things and yet feel no shame. This, oddly enough, made him love
his father more than he had done before, but it was a love very
different from the earlier one. Now he must guard and protect this man
who moved under some kind of influence that was straight from the Devil.
David, of course, believed in the Devil—did he not know him as he was
in human form?

His father must be loved and guarded because he was different from other
men, but no longer could he be worshipped—and this brought him nearer
to David. There had been from the beginning something fraternal in their
relationship. That was now strengthened.

Other changes had come upon Francis Herries in these five years. He was
not the beautiful, young, elegant person that he had been on his first
coming to Herries. His body had stoutened, his dress was more slovenly,
his air more careless. He bore at times—although he was worlds apart
from him—an odd resemblance to his brother Pomfret. At least you could
tell now that they were brothers.

In mood he was very much as he had been, gay, charming, sullen, angry,
kindly, cruel. He did not appear to feel his apartness. He had his
acquaintances in Keswick, men with whom he rode, betted and attended the
country events, also women. But David now knew he carried his secret
life within him and was never, for an instant, unaware of its presence.

They would have been, as a family, more thoroughly isolated than in
winter they were, had it not been for David’s country popularity on the
one side that made him friends with everyone in the valley and, on the
Keswick side, strangely enough, because of David’s sister Mary.

Mary was now fifteen years of age and Deborah fourteen. Mary was
handsome—she would be a true Herries woman, big-boned, broad-breasted,
carrying herself with that mixture of arrogance and confidence and
grace—that blending of hardness and courtesy, of indifference and
kindly attention, that brought in every country, society, and age such
Herries women to the front. She was indeed hard, determined, and
ambitious. Of her true feelings for her father she had given as yet no
sign, but she must from her very earliest age have felt that he was her
enemy, her thwarting opponent in every desire and longing that was hers.
In truth, every element in him must have always been distasteful to her,
his recklessness, his irony, his grossness, and, above all, his
unconsciousness of and disregard for public opinion. For she was
cautious, unaware of subtlety, grimly virtuous and alive to every public
wind that blew.

Very early, indeed, she must have surveyed the scene and decided that
not for her were the isolation of Herries, the mire of Borrowdale, the
rusticity of the country company, the coarseness and crudity of living.
She had never any eye for any beauty save her own, her only tenderness
was to herself, and she had a power of cautious waiting on the event, an
ability to spin over months and even years the web of her own secret
plans, that was both in its strength and secrecy extraordinary.

Very soon she had begun to turn her eye to Keswick and her cousins
there. That was her future world, or rather the stepping-stone to a
larger, grander one, and, at once, she began to use it. Very early she
won the admiration of her uncle and aunt. She was in truth the very type
that they could understand and admire.

She found, as she grew older, ways and means of reaching Keswick that
only ruthless determination could have taught her. At first her father
had angrily forbidden her his brother’s house, but soon he had grown
indifferent and lazy. He had never cared for this daughter of his. He
did not mind where she went. When she was fourteen she persuaded her
mother that she must have dancing-lessons and, riding her own horse,
would vanish into Keswick and no one question her.

It may have been that Pomfret and his wife found a certain triumph and
pleasure in thus alienating one of the children of Francis, but it is
more probable that they had not enough subtlety of mind for this. They
gained a certain definite pleasure in hearing the child rail against her
father, as she did in quiet, measured, determined tones, but soon it was
reason enough that she was there simply because she dominated all the
family and had already a kind of social power and authority that neither
they nor their children would ever acquire.

Of Deborah, as she grew older, no one save David ever thought. She was
not a pretty child. Pale of face, very thin of body, silent. Only her
brother knew her and the rare, sweet spirit that she had.

It was from her that he obtained his deeper and more subtle
consciousness of the beauty of the country around him. Child though she
was, she was sensitive to the minutest beauties—a brown dry tree on a
moonlight night, a glittering stream, the softness that snow on the
hill-tops gives to the reflective valley, the yellow bunches of leaves
on the oak tree, the purple depth of the lake seen beyond a bank of
primroses, the low singing of the swallows, the whiteness of
frost-bleached stones, the sudden flashing out of lights after a sullen
storm, a brown stream running turbulently below a white cottage—above
all, the sky of whose pageantry this country seemed more than any other
to offer extravagant splendours. She would watch it constantly with a
deep enwrapped contemplation, and yet she did not seem a dreamer, helped
with a steady unobtrusiveness in all the business of the house; but she
was, like her father, although in a very different way, a spirit alone,
the only citizen of her mysterious world.

She had a passion for no other human being save David. More than anyone
else in the family, she was attentive to Margaret Herries, never
irritated by her stupidities or exasperated by her tears; but she had no
close contact with her. That was, it might be, her mother’s fault. It
was her husband whom Margaret Herries loved, ceaselessly, deprecatingly,
monotonously, and her daughter Mary whom she admired. She would ask Mary
wistfully about Keswick and Pomfret and Jannice. She did not go to see
them because she was afraid of them and because her husband would be
angry if she did, but theirs was the life that she would have preferred
had she had the good fortune—to be in a fine house in a lighted town
with company and cards and an occasional ball—but these only if Francis
shared them with her.

As he did not choose that life she preferred this isolated one so that
he shared it with her. Shared was perhaps too strong a word for anything
that he did with her. He told her nothing, approached her always with
that same mixture of sarcastic humour and rough careless kindness: she
would never understand him at all; perhaps if the moment of
comprehension had ever come to her she would not have loved him any
longer, so that it was well as it was.

This, however, can at least be said, that, after Alice Press’ departure,
she was happier than she had been before. If he had other mistresses she
did not know of them, and like many another wife, after her and before,
so long as she did not know she did not question.

So these years had passed, a strange, slow mist of isolation creeping up
around Herries, a mist not of fact but of suggestion, an atmosphere that
slowly marked off this family as different from other families, a family
of another colour, as though they had been, these Herries, of foreign
blood, and had come from some very distant land where odd beasts dwelt
and dangerous rivers ran.

It was just about now that, for the first time, someone said in Keswick:
‘He’s a rogue, Herries—a fantastic rogue.’

Meanwhile, in this April month, Francis and his son David rode together
to Ravenglass to stay, for several nights, with brother Harcourt. They
rode over the Stye Head Pass and down into Wasdale. David rode on
Caesar, and Francis on a little shaggy horse that he called Walpole
because he had a belly and was cynically indifferent to any morality.
The little horses picked their way very carefully up the hill with
deliberate slowness.

No one hurried them. The day was grey and still with little pools of
sunlight in a dark sky. The hills had snow on their tops, but in the
valleys the larches were beginning to break into intense green flame. As
they wound up the Pass, the hills gathered about them, not grandly and
with arrogant indifference as larger hills do in other countries, but
with intimacy and friendliness as though they liked human beings and
were interested in their fates.

By the Stye Head Tarn it was grim and desolate. This Tarn lies, an ebony
unreflecting mirror, at the foot of the Gavel—beyond it, to the left,
soft green ridges run to Esk Hause and the Langdales and lonely Eskdale.

Above the green stretches there are the harsh serrated lines of Scafell
Pike and the thin edge of Mickledore. It was here, however, and on this
day that David had his first sharp consciousness of the Gavel, the grand
and noble hill that was one day to watch him struggling for his life.

It was not to be seen at its finest here from the Tarn, for it sprawled
away to the right almost without shape and form: nevertheless the spirit
of it, dauntless, generous and wise, seized and held him. The sunlight,
hidden elsewhere, broke above its head and caressed it; long strathes of
water, blue like the cold spring streams that ran below the snowdrops,
spread about its shoulders.

The whole expanse of land here is wide and strong, so that although no
plan or form is visible it makes of itself a form, the Tarn, the green
stretches, the grouping hills having their own visible life without any
human thought or agency to assist them.

They stayed for a little while beside the black Tarn. Herries, climbing
the Pass, had been very genial, speaking of anything that came into his
head, of a bull-baiting in Keswick, of funny days in Doncaster and of
his old long-ago life near Carlisle. When he was thus he and David were
like brothers. But suddenly now beside the Tarn he became morose and
gloomy. He withdrew into himself. In silence they rode down into
Wasdale, along the road, past the little church to the long lake’s edge.
Here there was great beauty, the grey lake without a ripple and
descending into it the black precipitous Screes, savage and relentless,
while on the bank where they rode everything was soft with golden sand,
green shelving meadow on which sheep were grazing, and the larches
bursting into leaf. All the afternoon they rode in silence turning
inland over rough, dull country.

It was not until they came to Santon Bridge that Francis Herries broke
the silence.

‘Thy uncle Harcourt is Jacobite. He is a romantic jackanapes. Let him
not talk thee over.’ Then he laughed, twisting himself round on his
horse to look at his stolid, thickset, square-shouldered son. ‘Not much
romantic notion in thy head, David.’

David to his own surprise did not answer. Perhaps it was that the scene
had now of itself become romantic. They were riding through thick woods,
and between the spaces of the trees the evening sky was faintly rose. A
bird, singing, seemed to accompany them. But it was not only the place
and the hour. David found that his father had unexpectedly touched
something in him that was deep and fervid. Was this the consequence of
that ride, seven years ago, with Father Roche? He could hear the melody
and worship of the priest’s voice now—‘Even as our Blessed Saviour, so
the King . . .’

And, realising this, he was aware that there was something in him here
that his father could neither govern nor command—nay, something that
his father could not touch. And yet the folly of it! What did he know
about Jacobitism, its rights or wrongs? And yet he seemed in those few
moments between the dark trees to have started some conflict with his
father.

‘Where has Father Roche been these years?’ he asked.

Herries tossed his head. ‘How do I know? He is a fool, a fanatic. He had
fine parts but must needs waste them on a mare’s nest. . . .’ Then he
added abruptly: ‘He hath been in Rome, tying the Pretender’s
shoe-strings.’

He went on as the evening gathered under the rosy sky. ‘He had a power
over me. He has had a power over many. But, believe me, if ever he
returns it will be for no good. An ill-omened bird. Yes, a
fanatic—better that, though, than a half-nothing like your father.
David, have you ever dreamt a recurring dream?’

David shook his head, laughing.

‘I am too heavy of nights to dream.’

‘I believe that.’ Walpole stumbled. Herries pulled at him with a curse.

‘I have a dream. . . .’ He stopped abruptly. ‘There are the lights of
Ravenglass. We are almost in.’ They came clattering over the cobbles of
the little place and smelt the salt sea and heard the sharp questioning
cry of the gulls. A fellow standing in a doorway directed them to
Harcourt’s house.

Although it was now dark David could see the little square white-fronted
house thrust back from the street in a small, walled garden. He smelt,
as they waited by the door, the sting of the sea and an aromatic scent
of herbs and could see here and there the faint yellow of blowing
daffodils.

A little old man, very ancient, in a white wig, knee-breeches, and with
large silver buckles to his shoes, holding a candle above his head,
opened the door cautiously to them, after much unbolting and unbarring
and rattling of chains. A moment later Harcourt Herries was there to
greet them.

They all went together round with the horses to the stables which were
at the back of the garden. The stars were coming out and a strong wind
blowing. They returned to the house, and Harcourt, a silver candlestick
held high in either hand, led them up to their room.

In the candlelight as he stood and talked to his brother, David could
see him clearly. He was a little thin spindle-shanked man very elegantly
dressed in an old fashion. He had the high, white forehead and the air
of breeding that belonged to the Herries, the breeding that even Pomfret
could not quite lose. You could see that he was brother to Francis, but
although he was only twelve years older, forty-nine to Francis’
thirty-seven, he might have been his brother’s father.

His face was thin and drawn and covered with a network of wrinkles; his
body was so slight and delicate that as with rare china you might expect
to see through it.

Everything about him was refined, from the thin gold ring with a green
stone on his finger, to the rich rose-colour of his skirted coat. His
voice, when he spoke, was very gentle and kind, and there was in it a
note, full and harmonious, that resembled something in Francis’ voice.

He looked exceedingly fragile as he stood in the candlelight beside his
brother, whose body was beginning to thicken, and his nephew, whose
strength and health shone through his young limbs. He had things about
him that were like Francis and Father Roche and Deborah, the three
people for whom David had, in his life, cared the most.

Harcourt left them to wash off the dirt and weariness of the ride. The
jugs and basins in the room were of old beaten silver, and round the top
of the four-poster ran a fine tapestry with friezes in rose and old
saffron.

Before they went down, Francis said to his son: ‘You will find no woman
in the house. Harcourt was once in his youth crossed in love. He cannot
abide women, and will have none about him.’

Downstairs in a charming panelled parlour they had a meal that was to
David a delight. The candlelight trembled before the dark panels.

It was late indeed for dinner, but there was fine fare—a grand salmon,
a patty of calf’s brains, a piece of roast beef, a dish of fruit with
preserved flowers, spinage tarts, sweet with candied orange and citron
peel mixed with the spinage, marrow and eggs, and fresh fruit, pears and
China oranges and muscadine grapes. There were French wines, Pontack and
Hermitage, and later when the table was cleared and showed a pool of
splendour under the candles, a bowl of Brunswick Mum, the most
intoxicating liquor known to man. Neither Harcourt nor his nephew was
drunk. The boy felt perhaps that for the first time, outside his own
house, he was treated as a man. Harcourt was a most charming host,
telling them in his gentle voice the romantic things about
Ravenglass—how its name meant grey-blue river, how three rivers—the
Esk, the Irt, and the Mite—joined here to make the almost landlocked
harbour, how once the Romans had been here and made a camp. How in those
days it was a place of importance, had its charter in the beginning of
the thirteenth century, and at Muncaster Castle near by, the Penningtons
would take refuge from the sea raiders, how Henry VI. fleeing there
after a lost battle gave his host an enamelled bowl of green glass, ‘the
Luck of Muncaster,’ how still there was traffic in the harbour and much
smuggling to and from the Isle of Man, which was but forty miles away.
He said that, as he sat there in his room, he could see the Romans and
the men of the Middle Ages and all the busy citizens of the place, when
it was a prosperous town, come crowding about him with their long, thin
faces and strange distant voices—and at that Francis, who was now drunk
with the Mum, laughed at him and called him a romantic fool.

It was then that David felt again an odd wave of antagonism to his
father sweep over him.

There was something moving between them, something new that had never
been between them before: soon it would appear and would be defined.

He became in that first evening attached to his uncle, and it was plain
enough that his uncle delighted in him; on the next morning, which was
cold and windy, Francis was oddly morose and, saying very little to
either of them, went off by himself. Uncle and nephew sat by the coal
fire in the parlour.

Harcourt talked of the days when he was a boy in the London of Queen
Anne. He had been fourteen years of age when he first went there. He had
been present at the sacking of the New Court in the Sacheverell riots
and had seen the huge bonfire of its furniture in Lincoln’s Inn Fields;
he had had nights on the _Folly_, the Thames barge opposite Whitehall,
although it had already then fallen out of fashion; he described the
coffee-houses as though he were still frequenting them—Anderton’s, the
Bay Tree, Button’s, Child’s, where you might, an you were lucky, see
learned celebrities like Dr. Mead and Sir Hans Sloane; or Don Saltero’s,
set up by Sir Hans Sloane’s servant, where there was a collection of
curiosities such as the Queen of Sheba’s cordial bottle, Gustavus
Adolphus’ gloves and King Charles II.’s beard which he wore in disguise
in the Royal Oak.

He had been a great lover of the drama, he told David, a faint flush of
enthusiastic memory staining his wrinkled cheek.

In the Dorset Gardens Theatre, he had witnessed a performance by the
lovely Mrs. Tofts. This theatre was pulled down in 1709, and the world
of pleasure knew it no more. In the Theatre Royal, in Drury Lane, he had
been thrilled by the performance of the second part of _The Destruction
of Jerusalem_. He would never forget the splendour of Mrs. Rogers as
Berenice.

But his chief love had been the Italian Opera. He had himself been
present at the great event of its opening on the 9th of April, 1705,
when Vanbrugh and Congreve had been there and Mrs. Bracegirdle had
spoken the Prologue. The opera on this occasion had been _The Triumph of
Love_.

As he talked he seemed to recreate about him all the distant and
vibrating life of that old time, already so quaint and unmodern, with
the busy scenes on the river, the perils of the night Mohawks, the
chatter of the shops and coffee-houses, and great figures like the Queen
and Harley and Marlborough moving in splendid ghostly grandeur.

But what held young David and made this talk memorable to him for ever
was the note of wistful and yet acquiescent regret in his uncle’s voice.
That had been the time when life had been so full of energy and
eagerness: everything had been promised then—love and fame and great
company—now in this little house, with the sea-coal’s thin glow between
the fire-dogs, the whisper and rustle of the sea beyond the dark
windows, the sense of the little dead and abandoned town once of so busy
a prosperity, the remoteness, the half-death-in-life, the eternal
melancholy of the indifferent passing of time. . . .

Nevertheless, Uncle Harcourt was cheerful enough. He opened with
delicate, reverent fingers his bookcases and produced his Spensers and
Miltons and Ben Jonsons. His favourite poet was Mr. Pope. He had
Lintot’s _Miscellany_ with the first publication of ‘The Rape of the
Lock,’ and the earliest editions of the _Iliad_ as the volumes appeared
from 1715 to 1720.

But most of all did he love the ‘Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate
Lady,’ and, with tears in his eyes, recited, his voice quivering a
little as he spoke:

‘By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned!
What tho’ no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances and the public show!
What tho’ no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polished marble emulate thy face!
What tho’ no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o’er thy tomb!
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be drest,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow;
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While Angels with their silver wings o’ershade
The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.’

So long as he lived David was never to forget that scene—the little
man, his wig a trifle awry, the volume in one hand, the other hand
behind the heavy skirt of his coat, the gentle, melodious voice, the
rain, that had now begun to fall, beating on the pane, the distant surge
of the sea, the steady friendly murmur of the grandfather’s clock. He
was not imaginative as his father was; he was never to care very
passionately for art and letters, but he made, in this morning, a new
friend and acquired for ever some sense of the tragedy of the passing of
time and the deep intangible beauty of old loyalties.

His uncle afterwards began to speak of his father. David at once
perceived two things, one that his uncle had in his youth deeply loved
his father. His older years had given him a protective maternal love of
him. There was something very feminine in Uncle Harcourt’s nature, and
more and more as the morning passed he reminded David of Deborah. And,
secondly, Harcourt was greatly distressed at his brother’s appearance.
He had not seen him for six years and although he said but little and
asked but few questions David could see that some unexpressed alarm
worked in him.

He spoke of Francis’ youth, of how he had been always different from the
others, capable of the greatest things, but that some instability had
always checked him. ‘He hath always imagined more than he grasped,
dreamed more than he could realise. There is a wild loneliness in his
spirit that no one can reach.’

Then coming and putting his hand most affectionately on David’s shoulder
he added: ‘But he hath bred his greater self in his son, who will fulfil
his dearest hopes. I can see that, and it gives me great happiness.’

They were thus affectionately together when Francis Herries came in. He
stayed in the doorway then came forward. ‘A very pretty picture,’ he
said. They were both immediately conscious of anger in his voice. David
drew away from his uncle, getting up and moving to the window.

‘Welcome, brother,’ said Harcourt. ‘Be warm by the fire and tell us
where you have been.’

‘Nay,’ Francis continued, his voice dry with sarcasm, ‘I am one too
many. I have a book to read—in my room.’ But Harcourt came across to
him, laughing, put his hand on his shoulder and drew him to the fire.

Francis was like a child. He sat by the fire, his feet stretched out,
and sulked. Their evening meal was not very gay. David felt in every
vein antagonism to his father. To repay his brother’s courtesy with such
childishness! At the age that he had, to sulk and pout like an infant!
And yet behind the childishness there was something real. Jealousy?
Loneliness? Discontent? Through the evening the antagonism between them
grew. By the close of the meal David was miserable. This was none of the
old childish quarrels that ended in a beating. And yet what was it
about? Where was its growth? A ride through darkening woods, drunkenness
over Mum, a flurry of rain. . . .

Sitting there Harcourt raised his glass. ‘The King!’ He crossed the
glass in the air.

Francis sprang to his feet. ‘None of that humbug, brother! The boy has
enough nonsense in his head.’

Harcourt flung his glass behind him. It smashed on the wall.

‘I have drunk my toast in my own house,’ he answered evenly.

An idiotic moonlight fluttered at the window, very feeble and wavering.

Francis walked to the door, stayed, then came back and put his hand on
his brother’s shoulder. ‘I am become too serious. I have had a day with
only ill thoughts for company.’ Then, surprisingly, he turned to his
son. ‘Will you come out with me, David? There is a moon.’

The boy nodded, then turned, smiling, to his uncle:

‘You will not be lonely for an hour?’

The little man smiled back at him.

‘Mr. Pope will drink a glass with me.’ They all smiled at one another.
Friendliness had suddenly returned.

Francis and David walked out into the little street, which was quite
deserted. There were two sounds, the even whisper of the sea and some
drunken fellow at a distance shouting a chorus. The moonlight was a
faint, grey, glassy shadow dimming the sharp outline of the houses, but
at the sea-edge it was stronger, flooding the water and giving an unreal
size and shape to the distant sand-dunes that lay like lazy, grey whales
on either side of the harbour.

A little boat stayed very faintly rocking at the shore’s edge.

‘Shall we take the boat out to the sand?’ Francis asked. ‘There’s no one
to prevent us.’ They climbed in, Francis took the oars and in silence
rowed over the water.

It was not excessively cold, and as they went forward the clouds
shredded away, the moon came out riding in a misty, starless heaven.
Round her was a ring dark red in colour.

David wondered what his father was going to do. He had some purpose.
David on his side felt his own independence resolutely strengthen. Some
subservience that there had always been to his father was no longer
there. The boat shelved gently on to the sand and they stepped out. The
sand was hard and crisp under the feet: the dune was naked save for a
thick black post that stood up, like a finger in the moonlight. They
walked over the dune and stood on the farther side. The sea was stronger
here, coming in fiercely and drawing back with a powerful grating
reluctance. They stood together looking out.

‘I will not have you play with this Jacobite folly,’ Francis said
suddenly. ‘Understand me in this. You are a child—your uncle is an old
dreamer and babbles of Queen Anne.’

David straightened his shoulders. ‘I have played with no Jacobite
folly,’ he said. ‘I have only spoken of it once and that for a brief
while.’

Francis felt the new tone in the boy’s voice. ‘You had some fine
intimate confidences with your uncle,’ he said scornfully. ‘I should
have remembered that he has a way with young men. Had I remembered I
would not have brought you.’

In each of them anger was rising; their isolation, thus standing quite
alone in a bare world that was all moonlight and water, increased their
sense of opposition.

David said coldly: ‘I am no child, father, any longer. I must have my
own judgement. My uncle is a generous host. To-day you have left him all
afternoon and he has not seen you for six years.’

His father turned to him passionately. ‘And so the babe has grown. . . .
By Christ, I’ll sit meekly by and have my son read me a lesson. Has the
hair grown above your belly yet, and how many women are with child by
you?’

David stood his ground, but strange old fears, born of whippings and
terrors and childish nightmares, crowded over the sand-dune and caught
at his feet. ‘I am on the edge of manhood and you should know it. I have
been child to you long enough. If I find my uncle care-worthy I have a
right to care for him. It is time when I must think for myself. I love
you, father, as I love no one else alive. There is a bond between us,
and, I suppose, will always be, that we can have with none other. You
have often recognised it. But I am my own man. I have my own life to
carry, and yield my liberty to no one——’

Francis laughed. ‘Your liberty—who constrains it? You speak bravely of
love, but there is also a word duty. When I say bend you shall bend.
When I command you shall go. No doubt but your uncle’s flattering
enlarges you—but not with me . . . come here.’

David came close to him. Francis caught his cheek and pinched it. ‘You
are mine, my fine son—strip now. Here, under this moon. I will run you
naked into the sea—cold bathing for a rebellious son. That shall cool
thy Jacobite notions. Strip then.’

‘I will not,’ David said. He was trembling from head to foot, but
neither with chill nor with fear.

‘You will not? . . . Better for thee far to obey. Strip—naked as you
were born.’

‘I will not,’ David said again.

Francis had in his hand a small cane with a gold-stamped head. He raised
it and struck David across the cheek with it. David caught it, flinging
it far into the sea.

They stood staring the one at the other.

‘That—never again,’ David said quietly. The moonlight showed the red
weal from his eye to his mouth—‘The last time . . .’

Francis stayed without a word. Then he turned and walked away across the
sand.

David stood there looking at the red ring around the moon, knowing that
something fundamental that would affect all his life had occurred. He
had the quality of common sense in melodrama; the unreality of any scene
did not lead himself to unreality. This was unreal, the desolate sand,
the crazy moon red-ringed, the mildewed sea, his father’s assault, his
own action—all unreal and yet at their heart a real and true fact, that
he was child no longer.

He waited: he was sure that his father would return and that then,
perhaps, they would be companions as they had never been before. His
father did return, slowly coming across the sand, his figure thin and
hard in the soft moonlight.

When he was near David went up to him, holding out his hand and smiling.
‘You must know for yourself,’ he said, ‘that the water is too cold. And
for your cane you shall have another.’

Francis caught him, gripped his shoulder, then stood close, his hand
against his wounded cheek.

‘You are a boy no longer. You are right in that. But I have been jealous
to-day, suffering torture for you.

‘Always I have been judged to lose anything where I put value, and to
catch to me closer than a flea anything that was worthless.

‘For years I have been prepared for you to go like the rest. When you
were a baby I would watch and say, “Now, in a moment his eyes will
change. He will know me for a rogue.” And then, as one accident after
another passed and still you were the same, I would say, “He is only a
child. He hasn’t heard. He hasn’t years enough to understand.” When my
temper or my lust has driven me I have thought, “This will take him away
the sooner,” and I have almost wished for that, because my dread of
losing you would be the earlier satiated. And now, to-day, watching your
happiness with your uncle, I went out so that he should tell you
everything—how as a child I did this and as a youth that, this way a
rogue, that way a villain.

‘I thought, “When I return he will know me for what I am, and our time
together will be over. Then everything and everyone will have gone from
me and I need fear no more.”

‘And I came in and saw his arm about your neck and hated you, loving you
never so dearly as then. Never so dearly—save now.’

He broke off, then drawing David closer to him, waved his hand at the
moon. ‘The red ring—so it was when I ruffled my first girl, twelve
years of age as I was, in a hay-loft.’ Then he turned David towards him
and looked at him: ‘One day you will go from me—but not yet.’

David, smiling, said:

‘Why should I ever leave you? I have no light sentiment about persons.
You and Deborah I could never leave. You have told me,’ he went on,
hesitating a little, ‘that I have no imagination nor fancy. I think that
is true. I see what is before me and only that. But I am the easier
faithful. I have noticed that those who have much fancy are but rarely
steadfast. But this I know. Were I made more cleverly I would be of less
enduring service to you.’

He said this with a very grave air, as though he had long been elderly.

His father answered him: ‘There are only nineteen years between us, and
as time goes they will lessen. Soon we shall be of an age: then you will
pass me and be old before I am weaned. But remember this,’ he touched
the boy’s arm lightly, almost withdrawing from him, ‘whatever others
say, I have it in me to be faithful—only as yet I have found neither
cause nor person nor quality fit for that fidelity. I say this with no
arrogance. I know what I am, and that is no fine thing. Nor do I say
that with modesty. God may answer, if He is, for it is He that has made
a man in a mouldy broken image of a divine ambition. . . . But always
with us Herries there have been one or two who see farther than they can
reach and hope for more than they shall ever get.

‘Their place is to break up that pattern formed so beautifully by such
as your dear uncle Pomfret. So the strife goes on, and will always go
between the marred angels and the belly-filling citizens who have their
fine houses and thank God they are not as others.

‘The Herries have always been thus, and will always be, so making a fine
study for your social observer.

‘But I can dream of beauty, and if one day it is put in my hand . . .’

He broke off. ‘What I would say,’ he added, kicking the sand with his
shoe, ‘is that crab-apples are deceiving when they shine in moonlight,
and the taste is stale.’

Then, almost passionately, he cried:

‘Ah, but stay by me, David. I am going the wrong way, and what matters
it? It is only another man lost. But one day I may be faithful to
something, and then I would have you witness of it.’

David, who only saw the principal fact, that his father needed him,
answered, as Ruth once answered:

‘I will never leave you.’

His father, looking at him ironically, said:

‘Your imagination saves you, Davy. That you have none, I mean. But you
have made a vow here. I must have something for the loss of my gold
cane.’

And then, the wind once more rising, whipping up the waves, they turned
back across the sand.

CHRISTMAS FEAST

The December weeks that winter of 1737 were wonderful. Frost held the
valley: Derwentwater Lake was frozen from end to end for thirteen days;
the hills were powdered with thin patterns of snow hardening to crystal
under a blue sky.

The valley was now truly enclosed. The outer world did not exist for it.
The autumnal rains had been very violent, and, after them, Borrowdale
barred its door.

The Herries family itself took the fashion. Even Mary deserted her
Keswick cousins. As Christmas approached they were all caught into the
general eagerness. In every house in the valley such a baking and
brewing was going on as the Herries children had never seen in their
Doncaster days. And the materials for this were all self-provided. No
going into Keswick for town provisions. The valley was sufficient for
itself. Down the path below Herries the Statesman Peel would be
striding, his hands in huge home-made mittens, his jacket buttoned up to
his chin, passing his dairy-maid who, with her piggin in her hand, was
hurrying to the cow-house, relishing the warmth and smell of the cows
after the bitter cold that descends from the snowy hills; the boys
sliding on the little pond beyond Herries in their wooden clogs, the
blue sky, the snowy hills over all, the Wise Man with the pink ribbons
to his moleskin hat moving up the road to Seathwaite, witches hiding, no
doubt, in the Glaramara caves, the Devil warm at a farm-house fire with
his pedlar’s pack, and all the wives and daughters washing, baking,
churning; the puddings and pies will be enough for all Cumberland.

As Christmas approached more nearly David became uneasy and restless. It
may have been that there was something ominous for him in the strange
isolation of this valley. It was not that he was dull; every moment of
the day seemed to be filled. He was now friend to all the valley.
Whatever they might feel about his father there was no differing opinion
about himself. His handsome looks and splendid body (he promised to be a
giant both in breadth and height; he was already as tall as his father),
his courage, openness and sincerity, the absence of all conceit and
social arrogance, his simplicity, a certain animal lack of subtlety, his
kindliness of heart and warmth of feeling—here promised to be a man of
no ordinary colour, and everyone realised it. He had that greatest of
all powers—he loved his fellows without being conscious that he loved
them. Had he been a little less simple he might have seen them more
justly, but in the end have judged them more untruly.

With all its simplicity, his character, as it was developing, was not
uninteresting. His fearlessness, honesty and warmth of heart gave even
his smallest adventures a richness of colour. He was of the race around
whom legends grow: already people told stories of his strength, of how
he had bent an iron bar in Peel’s kitchen, beaten a shepherd from
Watendlath, and whacked a Seathwaite farmer at singlestick and he
champion of the valley—small stories, but he was already talked of
beyond Bassenthwaite and over Buttermere and Loweswater. Borrowdale was
the proudest of all the valleys and the stickiest to foreigners, but its
natives already showed signs of adopting young Herries. Young Herries,
but no other of the Herries family. It was possibly of this that David
was subtly aware, partly this that roused his uneasiness.

It seemed to him that this valley had entrapped them. He was not sorry
to be entrapped—he was happier here than he had ever been anywhere—but
the sense that they were caught and held roused his fear. It was the
only fear that life perhaps could give him—the fear of confinement—and
now not so much for himself as for his father. He was growing now to be
a man and ever since that night at Ravenglass he had been on
shoulder-level with his father. His father seemed to him more alone than
anyone in the world. No one in the valley was his friend. He was someone
of a different nation from all of them—from his own son as well.

And the valley, because it was at this time almost savage in its
isolation, hated and feared, like all savage things, what was different
from itself. David loved his father now more than he had ever done, but
he understood him less the older he grew, and feared for him more with
every day.

He saw with his own eyes once a small child run from his father
screaming. He did not yet know that the mothers of the valley told their
babies that Rogue Herries would eat them if he caught them.

Nearer to David’s father than any other man in the valley was Statesman
Peel. He was himself a rather isolated man, gigantic in build but
silent, keeping to himself. Rendal Peel, his son, David’s dearest
friend, was frightened of his father and could manage no contact with
him. He too was a silent boy, adoring David, following him like a dog.

So there they were this Christmas that was fated to add another legend
to the Herries story. Rogue Herries who sold his woman for thirty silver
pieces and Rogue Herries who was slashed in the cheek by young
Osbaldistone. . . . Nothing stands still. The course that the lives of
Francis Herries and his son David were to take was largely fashioned
that winter.

All England was at this time wrapped in superstition: the Age of Reason
was only now stirring in that romantic womb—and no valley in England
was more superstitious than this little one of Borrowdale. Perhaps you
could not call it superstition, so active a part in daily life did they
play, pixies and warlocks, gnomes and little green Johnnies, the Devil
and his myriad witches. It was not far back that men of Borrowdale,
seeing a red deer on the hills, had thought it a horse with horns and
pursued it for a magical twist of the Devil; and the wall to keep in the
cuckoo would yet have succeeded had it been but a story higher.

It was unlikely that David, a child of his time, would escape this
magic. As he sat now, a week before Christmas, with Deborah before the
open fire in the Herries hall and saw the snow swirl like twisting
worsted beyond the leaded panes, he felt that they were both held there
by a spell—the spell, it might be, of his wicked old ancestor hanging
on the panelled wall.

His great shoulders and long legs sprawled beyond his chair; his fair
head was thrown back; his eyes, warm in spite of their bright blueness,
stared into the black beams above him. Deborah, seated at his feet,
looking up at him, thought that she had never seen anyone so splendid.

‘Deb, why is it that they hate father so?’

For how long now had this question been hovering between them!

‘There is a separateness about father.’ She stared into the golden
cavern that hung, lit with sparks of fire, between the black logs. ‘They
cannot understand him nor he them.’

‘Deb, do you understand him?’

‘Yes, I fancy so. He dreams of what life should be and because it falls
so far behind his dream he abuses it.’

David let his hand fall on her hair.

‘I am no dreamer, but I can see how a man in this life may have
ambitions to alter it. I am a poor oaf, Deb. I love every moment of the
day. Just to feel the blood in my veins is enough for me. Such a day as
yesterday with Rendal on the Gavel when, from the summit, you could look
out to the sea like a green shawl and all the tops hushed with
snow. . . . That’s enough for me, Deb. And always will be. I shall never
go from here. I shall never do anything in the world. . . . I cannot be
unhappy like my father.’ Then he added, dropping his voice: ‘I am afraid
for our father.’

And she whispered: ‘I also.’

They had never, although their lives had been so intimate, confessed so
much to one another, and in their young hearts, courageous and generous,
there beat a tremendous impulse of loyalty and protection to him.

They offered their young bodies and their strong souls as shields and
bucklers for his protection, whatever he might do or be. No matter how
valueless his worth they were his guard and would always be.

Deborah looked up to David and clasped his hand; as they looked at one
another that was what they meant. Then they both saw, leaning a little
heavily against the window-ledge, their mother. Her face was pallid: her
hands gripped the wood. She was like a heavy ghost: she had made no
sound and her eyes did not move.

‘I am unwell,’ she suddenly gasped. ‘I have a sharp pain at my breast.’

David jumped up and ran to her. He put his arm about her and with his
great strength almost carried her up the little stairs to her room. She
smiled very faintly as he laid her on the bed.

‘The pain is nothing,’ then, closing her eyes, she murmured, ‘Christ is
kind. . . . He moves gently. . . .’ She caught her son’s hand. ‘Don’t
tell your father. . . . How cold it is in this valley.’

She was better again by Christmas Eve, and was up seated in the hall,
watching them dance to the fiddle of old Johnny Shoestring, whose bow
squeaked like a dying hen. That was the happiest evening they had yet
had in Borrowdale. The hall was bright, the fire leaping, the candles
burning, the floor shining. Wilson had hung three old flags that had
been buried in the oak chest, one of crimson with a white cross, one of
faded purple and one of green. Whose flags? From what wars? No one knew.
The holly was thick with red berries that year and hung from the
rafters. They could hear the bells ringing from the Chapel above the
splash and crackle of the fire. Francis was a child, younger than any.
They danced till they sank on the floor with weariness. Margaret Herries
never moved her eyes from her husband.

Next night, Christmas night, they were invited to Statesman Peel’s. It
was not as it was in most parts of England where, at Christmas time, the
Squire was the King of the Castle and his subjects were graciously
bidden to enjoy his hospitality with a proper sense of his grand
benignancy and their inferior peasantry. In Borrowdale every Statesman
was master of his own house and owed allegiance to no one. Every
Statesman’s house was open on Christmas night to all the world, rich and
poor. There were the guests, indeed, who had their special places there,
but the doors were wide open to the stars and the line of friendly hills
and the hard-frosted road.

Peel’s kitchen this night was a place of splendour. Its warmth and
colour, its happiness and hospitality, stretched to the farthest
heavens. Glaramara and the Gavel looked in at the windows, the Derwent
rolled its waters past the door, and every star scattered its light over
the roof-tree.

There is no house like Peel’s house anywhere in England any more, but,
as it stood then, in its life and strength and happiness, it was thus.
It was a strong place, secured with strong doors and gates, its small
windows crossed with bars of iron. It held three rooms on the ground
floor and two on the second story.

The front door was covered with a low porch, the entrance from which was
called the ‘thresh-wood’ or threshold, and on this thresh-wood crossed
straws, horse-shoes and so on, were laid to hinder the entrance of
witches. From this there was a broad passage through the house called
the ‘hallan’; sacks of corn were deposited here before market-day, pigs
were hung after killing, and there was a shelf over the door where
sickles hung and carpentry tools were laid.

In Peel’s house the hallan opened straight into the ‘downhouse’. This
was in his case the great common room of the family, the place of
to-night’s Christmas Feast. Here, in the course of the year, everything
occurred, baking, brewing, washing, meals, quarrelling, courting,
tale-telling. This downhouse had no second story but was open to the
rafters. In later days a second story was often built over the
downhouse. The sides of this room were smeared with clay and cow-dung.
Joints of meat hung dry for winter use. From the smoky dome of the huge
fireplace dropped a black sooty lee called the ‘hallan drop’. Under this
the women knitted or spun wool or flax, the men sometimes carding the
wool, the children learning their lessons, the old men telling their
tales. At the opposite end of the passage was the mill-door and beyond
this another passage known as the ‘heck’, and this heck was terminated
by a huge octagonal post. Into this post sometimes a hole was bored and
in it a piece of cow-hair secured by a wooden peg for the purpose of
cleaning combs, and behind the heck was a bench.

The windows were separated by stone munnions, and here were the Bible
and Prayer Book, _Tom Hickathrift_ and Sir William Stanley’s _Garland_.

The chimney wing was spacious. Indeed, this was a really vast chamber,
for it was the ‘house’ or dwelling-room and ‘downhouse’ or kitchen
thrown into one. Part of it therefore stood for kitchen with the great
chimney and hearth; here, on the heap of wood ashes, was the ‘handreth,’
an iron tripod on which was placed the ‘girdle’ for baking oat-bread.
Before the fire stood a spit. The two standards, which were three feet
high with seven hooks, were hinged, so that they could be folded and put
away when not in use. The spit, a slender rod, was six feet in length,
and on the rod were two pairs of prongs to hold the meat, and beneath it
a dripping-pan. There was a handmill or ‘quern,’ a malt mill, a spindle
and a ‘whorl,’ a spinning wheel. In the chimney wing were hung hams and
sides of bacon and beef, and near the fire-window was an ingle-seat,
comfortable most of the year save when the rain or snow poured down on
to the hearth, as the chimney was quite unprotected and you could look
up it and see the sky above you. Such was the kitchen end of the room.
The floor to-night was cleared for the dancing, but at the opposite end
trestle-tables were ranged for the feasting. Here was also a large oak
cupboard with handsomely carved doors. This held the bread, bread made
of oatmeal and water. On the mantel and cupboard there were rushlight
holders and brass candlesticks. In other parts of the room were big
standard holders for rushlights.

All these to-night were brilliantly lit and blew in great gusts in the
wind.

Francis Herries, arriving with his children, David, Mary and Deborah,
found that already everything was in a whirl. Peel himself greeted them
magnificently, standing his six foot four, splendid in his dark coat of
native fleece and buckskin breeches, and Mrs. Peel, stout, very red of
face, in russet, all the little Peels (and there were very many)
gathered together behind her.

Many were already dancing. It was a scene of brilliant colour with the
blazing fire, the red berries of the holly glowing in every corner, old
Johnny Shoestring in bright blue breeches and with silver buckles to his
shoes perched on a high stool fiddling for his life, the brass gleaming,
faces shining, the stamp of the shoon, the screaming of the fiddle, the
clap-clap of the hands as the turns were made in the dance—and beyond
the heat and the light the dark form of the valley lying in breathless
stillness, its face stroked by the fall of lingering reluctant snow.

After the first greeting the Herries family stood quietly by the wall.
Fragments of talk, slow cautious words like the repetition of some magic
recipe, circled the light.

‘Hoo ayre ye to-day? Hey ye hard ony news?’ . . .

‘Ye say reet, nowt se sartain. Gud day. Ayre ye all weel at heam?’ . . .

‘Aye, they said she was worth brass. . . .’

‘Whya, he’s nobbut read about it; what can he knaw? I sud think if he
minds his awn job it’ll be as weel.’

Peel came and asked Francis Herries to sit by him. His elder girl took
Mary and Deborah. David found Rendal.

Francis had come with some of the gaiety and happiness of the preceding
night and, as always when he was happy, it seemed to shine in him. He
was dressed simply to-night in a suit of grey and silver; although in
these last years he had stoutened and broadened he was still handsome
beyond all ordinary men. His charm, when he was charming, was so
gracious and natural that it won everyone near him.

From the moment of his entering every eye had been upon him. To these
people of the valley, although they had talked for months of his
wickedness, cruelty, and the strange mystery that led him to isolate
himself in this loneliness, he was yet at sight something miraculous and
magnificent beyond belief. He was the Dark Angel of their secret dreams.

Romantic—but to himself he was not romantic. As he sat there beside
Peel, he could feel the old devilish struggle beginning in him. Partly
this was an evening after his heart. He cared nothing for class—all the
world was his fellow. He liked to see this common happiness; he could
feel in this little, hot, sweating, smelly world all the animal
satisfaction that had no ill in it.

He would set them all, had he his way, eating, drinking, fornicating,
singing—the whole world singing over its surfeited belly—and mingled
with this a tenderness, a kind of familiar protection so that he could
love these owl faces, these humped bodies, these spindle legs for their
little homely tragedies and satisfactions.

So go we all
Down the dark path,
Alien, to the friendly tomb.

This sense of common luck with the veriest hind was something that had
always separated him from Pomfret, Harcourt and the rest—yes, and from
his own children.

To-night he could feel it to the full as the rushlights scattered
streams of light in the wind and the smell of unwashen bodies,
perspiring chaps, dog’s offal, burning wood and cooking meat gathered in
the air, and all the faces turning in the middle of the room, dilated
with the music and the movement—dog faces, horse faces, pig faces, bird
faces—but gathering an extra humanity as they felt happiness
encouraging them and leading them on to confidence.

He would jump down and share this with them, the drink and the food and
the tousling the girls. But he was alone. He could share nothing with
anyone. His touch was enough; at the feel of it everything withdrew.
Within the heart of the burning candle he was isolated; at its core it
was ice. He was ringed with flame and could not get out.

He looked at Peel whom he liked, his big body set back, his broad face
spread in laughter: he looked at David whom he loved, moving into the
middle of the room crowded now with faces. No one was alone save
himself, and he by his own mysterious fault. He was well aware by now of
how suspicious they were of him.

This suspicion had blown like a subtle poison through the valley. What
had he done to create it? Been drunk once or twice, kissed a girl or
two, lost his temper on an occasion—nothing definite save that foolish
affair with Alice Press. . . . She had spoken truly. Since that day he
had never been rid of her.

But he knew well that it was no positive deed on his part that had
separated him. It was something in his spirit. They suspected that
battle that was never still in himself, disgust fighting with longing,
lechery with an icy purity, a driving dream with sodden reality, the
devil in him that would never leave him alone, try as he would to
throttle it with self-contempt, irony and the discipline of his
impulses.

Sitting now beside Peel he envied that great healthy body, that steady
mind, that serene soul, and even as he envied knew that this very
thought was separating him, driving him into loneliness and this bitter
isolation.

The door would open and the snow blow through in little impatient gusts
and all the valley would pour in with it. The room was crowded now
against the wall and in the corners. The ale was passing round, and
voices were loud and laughter ferocious. But everyone behaved in seemly
fashion: a dignity, that seemed to radiate from the grand figure and
quiet hospitality of the host himself, pervaded the place. Only—as
Francis Herries could feel—he could sniff it in the air—there was a
kind of madness behind the dignity, something that belonged to the
witches and old crippled warlocks, to the naked shapes playing under the
stars above Seatoller, to the broomsticks flying dimly like thin clouds
towards the moon.

Suddenly there was a cry: ‘They coom. They’re here.’ It was the
‘Play-Jigg.’ This was the drama in verse played by the actors who,
to-night, were passing from Statesman’s house to Statesman’s house.

Johnny Shoestring ceased his playing, the dancers vanished, the centre
of the room was clear. Packed against the walls now were bodies and
faces, legs and backs. There was whispering and tittering, but quite
clearly in the immediate silence could be heard the hiss of the snow
hovering down through the open chimney on to the fire.

They came forward. Francis was amused as he saw that the Master of these
Ceremonies was his old friend the pedlar, David’s Devil. Very roguish he
was to-night in a cocked purple hat and purple tights showing his thin,
spidery limbs, his face with its crooked ironic smile, and his black
shining eyes.

He introduced his little company, Old Giles, a bent old man with a long
chin, Pinch, a clown, a stout and jolly fellow, a husband and a wife,
and young Go-to-Bed who at once in a high, shrill treble introduced
himself:

‘My father is old and decrepit,
My mother deceased of late,
And I am a youth that’s respected,
Possessed of a good estate.’

The old couple did a little dance of joy at this, and then Pinch the
clown came forward and asked young Go-to-Bed if he wanted to increase
his fortune. Of course young Go-to-Bed was eager, so Pinch introduced
him to Old Giles, who said he would show him how to make money out of
nothing. This young Go-to-Bed was delighted to know, so Old Giles told
him that he must have his arse kicked a dozen times by friend Pinch, and
then he must put his head in a bucket of water and then must sit up a
night alone in a churchyard: all these things young Go-to-Bed performed
to the infinite delight of the audience, especially in the churchyard
when Pinch, dressed as a painful ghost, emptied a sack of flour over
young Go-to-Bed and set the dogs on to him.

The ‘Jigg’ ended in a grand dance and in this the audience soon joined.
Go-to-Bed, his face white with flour, led off with Mrs. Peel, and Peel
took the Old Lady, and soon all the room was turning to Johnny
Shoestring’s music.

Still Francis Herries did not move. He was alone on the raised seat near
the fire-window. All his children were dancing; even Mary now had
forgotten her superior airs and breeding and was smiling at young
Curtis, son of a Newlands Statesman. The pedlar came across to Francis.

‘Good day.’

‘Good day,’ said Francis.

‘You are not dancing, sir.’

‘In my own time,’ said Francis.

The pedlar stood there smoothing his hands down the sides of his legs
with a look of infinite satisfaction.

‘It is very cold up at the valley end,’ the pedlar said, ‘but the
moonlight warms the air. Leave this and take a walk with me.’

Herries felt an impulse to go. The thought of the cold, the black ridge
of the hills, and the sky silver-thickened, the freshness, the icy air,
was fiercely attractive. His dream—the splendid horse breasting the
dark lake under the icy spears—seemed to penetrate the very heart of
the thickly smelling, heated room. Close to him the hams and the dried
beef swung ever so slightly in the great chimney. A country girl mopped
her sweating brow. Beyond the fire-window he fancied that he could hear
a cow, desolate in the dark field, lowing for its calf, but of course
there would be no cow outside at Christmas. He was about to say that he
would go when the pedlar touched his arm.

‘Here are strangers,’ he said, pointing with his long white finger.

Francis Herries followed his direction and saw pressed near the door at
the hallan end a man and a woman and a child. The man was rough, bony,
with long black hair that tumbled on to his shoulders, the woman
white-faced, crouching a little as though she feared a blow, and pressed
against her dress was a very young child. It was the child that held
Herries’ notice. She could not have been above seven or eight years of
age, her face so white that it might have been blanched by moonlight.
But it was her hair that was astonishing. She was wearing a little
peaked man’s cap of grey with a russet feather in it and under this her
hair fell almost to her tiny waist. Its colour was flame. Flame.
Francis, incredulously smiling at his interest, repeated the word.
Flame. As though her head were on fire. Flame smouldering, with a sudden
movement of her little shoulders glancing in coloured shadow as though
it were alive. It sank into darkness as fire does, then lifted into
amber and rolled about her head in smoky sombre red. She pressed farther
back against her mother, and the flame seemed to creep across the dress,
to move, to stir, then to lie there, idly licking the dull stuff.

Between this fire the little face looked out, the face of a tired baby,
weary, scornful, ironically interested and alone.

‘I have never seen such hair,’ Herries said, as though to himself.

‘Come and burn your hand in it,’ said the pedlar.

Herries got up and looked about him. The brightness of that baby’s hair
seemed to have dimmed and hushed the room. The candlelight was smoked,
the voices, the laughter, the trampling of feet shut away behind glass.
Herries followed the pedlar across the floor. As they approached the man
frowned and drew his body together animal fashion. He was all animal, he
smelt animal, looking out with sharp suspicious eyes from his shaggy
black hair. The woman did not move, but looked up at Herries. The pedlar
smiled at her: ‘Hey, Jane Starr,’ he said.

Then the woman spoke to Herries: he was astonished at her voice, which
was soft and musical and without any real accent.

‘You have forgot me, sir.’

He smiled down at the child. ‘I fear that I have.’

‘Once you gave me your coat,’ she said softly, staring into his eyes. So
that was it! The morning of the day that was to prove so eventful to
him, the morning of the Chinese Fair. The tang of that walk came back to
him, his happiness, the freshness, the waterfall clinging like a ladder
to the rock, the dead man, the patient woman.

‘You were welcome to it,’ he said, looking at her for the first time.
Her face was not comely. White and weary, but there was strength and
courage in it.

‘And this is your child?’ he asked.

‘My child,’ the woman answered. But the man made no movement, only
stared moodily into the whirling room. It was strange that her voice was
so soft yet came clearly through all the racket and din of voices, music
and stamping feet.

‘Of what age is she?’

‘Eight,’ the woman answered.

Eight!—and so independent and alone in this jostling cruel world. He
thirty-seven, and yet already there was some kinship between them. . . .

‘What is her name?’

‘Mirabell,’ and then after a little pause with a quick glance at the man
beside her—‘Mirabell Starr.’

Mirabell Starr—so he heard for the first time the name that would never
leave his consciousness again. He could be very sweet with children. He
squatted on his hams, his silver sword trailing on the floor. He put out
his strong hand and took her tiny one.

‘Mirabell. That is a man’s name, you know. . . . Shall we be friends?’

Her strange grey eyes, shining with deep lights, regarded him very
gravely. She sighed, then very indifferently answered:

‘If my mother wishes.’

Her voice was low, sweet and distant, a little as though it were caught
in the echo of a shell. He was charmed with it. Squatting a little lower
he put out his arm and drew her in to him, pressing her gently between
his knees. The silver thread on his sleeve rubbed her neck, but she did
not draw back. Nor did she come to him of her own will.

‘Where do you live, my pretty?’

‘I live with my mother.’

‘And where is that?’

The woman spoke.

‘We are from Ennerdale, sir.’

‘Ah, from Ennerdale.’

At last, drawing a little breath as though he foretold the emotion that
it would give him, he put up his hand and stroked her hair: it seemed
that a wave of pleasure passed through his body. Its texture was
infinitely soft and lay against the back of his hand like music.

‘How come you here? You should be at home on Christmas night.’

The man spoke for the first time. ‘We have no settled place. I am a
horse-dealer.’ His voice was rough and very ungracious, but it had no
tang of the North.

Herries caught the child closer. Her head was almost against his breast,
and it was as though his heart leapt towards it to greet it. He felt in
his pocket and found a charm, a negro’s head in gold with ruby eyes—it
was a charm against the ague.

‘Will you take this from me—a Christmas gift?’ he asked.

For a moment, to steady herself, she laid one tiny hand on his thigh
while with the other she took the little negro. A thrill of happiness
ran through him. She looked at the charm very gravely.

‘’Tis against the ague,’ he told her. ‘You will not catch it an you keep
this with you.’

She looked up at her mother, then at the man.

‘It is very pretty,’ she said. ‘I thank you.’ But although her
expression was that of a grown woman her fingers tightened round it as a
baby’s would.

He kissed her forehead, then straightened himself to his full height.

‘I wish you good day,’ he said, bowing to the woman very slightly, then
turned and walked into the room. He turned confusedly like a man in a
dream. For a while he could not see the room clearly. Strange
coincidence! That this should be the woman whom carelessly that morning
he had for a moment protected! What had been her history? Who was the
dead man, who now this present animal, this horse-dealer, horse-thief he
did not doubt? She did not look a woman who would pass lightly from man
to man—but what did she at all in that company? Mirabell . . .
Mirabell. . . . So the child was called. Poor little misery, already
bearing in her eyes the knowledge of hardship, cruelty, aloneness. What
a life must she have with such a man and his company! Almost he was
tempted to turn aside, go back and make some mad demand for the child’s
protection. A nice affair—to be mixed in such a throng! As though there
were not already scandal enough. But he looked back nevertheless. There
was no sign of them. They were hidden by the dancers. The Christmas
Feast was at its height.

This was a scene from Breughel. The trestle-tables were piled with food,
pies and puddings, hams and sides of beef. The drink was for the most
part ale, but there was creeping into the valley now that new destroying
devil of the English countryside, the demon gin. There were signs of it
here to-night—men were pressing the girls now, their faces flushed,
their hands fumbling for breast and side. The women were giggling, the
dogs snapping at food and legs and one another. An old man with long
white hair, thin as a scarecrow, was dancing very solemnly alone in the
middle of the floor, twisting his body into corkscrew shapes. At a table
near the chimney a group of old people were playing at cards. But
wildness was coming in, coming in from the caverns of the hill, and the
high, cold spaces round Sprinkling Tarn and the lonely passes above the
listening valleys. It was Christ’s Day no longer. He had been turned out
when the wind had changed, and all the doors and shutters of the house
had rattled their shoulders at His going.

Peel himself felt perhaps that his hand was losing its hold on the
scene. And perhaps he did not care. He was a man of his time, and that
was a rough time, a cruel and a coarse. They had a small, wild, starving
dog, strayed in from the valley, and they had tied him to the leg of a
table, and were holding meat just beyond his nose, while he yelped in
his agony of hunger, and his little fierce protesting eyes darted wildly
about the room.

Up in the half-darkness of the hallan one of the shepherds was stripping
to a whispering group of men and girls to show his tattooed body, made
when he was in the Indies as a boy, marvellous, they say, a whole
love-story on his legs and back. Although the night was bitter, couples
twined closely together wandered out of the house up the road, kissing
to the eternal murmur of the running water.

Then the house-door burst wide and a strange crew broke into the room.
They came shouting, singing and very drunk. Their shoulders were
powdered with snow, and their frosty breath blew in clouds about them.
This was a party that had ridden over from Keswick and Portinscale and
Grange, had found their way under the moon to Rosthwaite, and now,
drinking at every stage, were turning back again (an they were sober
enough to ride) to Keswick. Here was the Lord of Misrule and his
followers, a young fellow with very flushed face, a crown awry on his
crooked wig, his clothes of purple satin and gold, carried on the
shoulders of four half-naked men blacked like Indians and followed by a
motley baggage-heap dressed fantastically as jesters, Chinamen and
clowns. There was a Hobby-horse and old Father Neptune with his trident.
They burst the doors, then paused to arrange their procession. The naked
Indians threw off their cloaks in which they had been wrapped against
the cold, caught up their young Lord of Misrule and shouldered him, and
so marched up the room, followed by the Jester with his bauble, a lady
with a flaxen wig and very naked bosom, Neptune and a posturing,
shouting throng.

The natives of the valley drew back against the wall. Here were
foreigners from the town, and though their intrusion was no new thing at
a Christmas time, yet it boded no good. It had ended before in a bloody
riot and so might do again. Francis had been looking for his children,
and finding them had bidden David take his sisters home, then, if he
would, return. So he was once again alone, a great stillness in his
heart in the midst of the riot, once or twice looking to see whether he
could catch sight of the child and her mother: it seemed that they were
gone.

Watching this new invasion he found that he recognised three at least of
the company, two from Keswick. The Lord of Misrule himself was young
Cuthbertson, son of a wealthy merchant; one of the black men young
Fawcett, a Squire’s eldest boy; and the Jester himself with his cap and
bells Osbaldistone from Threapthwaite, near Whitehaven. Young
Osbaldistone was often at Keswick, and Herries had been with him at
cards and cock-fighting. There was no love between them. Herries had won
his money, which the young fool could ill afford to lose, and Herries
had kissed a girl that Osbaldistone had also been pursuing.

At the sight of him a spasm of revolt and disgust caught his heart. He
had drunk nothing: he had been moved to-night by the courteous
friendliness of Peel, by the happy simplicity of the earlier part of the
evening, and, at this last, by his meeting with the child. Apart and
reserved as he seemed standing there alone, yet his heart had been
filled with kindliness and an almost childlike desire to be friends with
the world.

At the sight of this rabble he was tempted to slip away and find his
bed. Had he gone, the whole course of his life would have been other.
Nevertheless our lives are dictated by character, not by chance. Some
foolish pride kept him. He fancied that from the corner by the
fire-window the pedlar sardonically watched him. It was true that many
eyes were on him, as they had been all the evening; so, because he had
some conceit and felt a challenge in the air, he stayed.

Events followed then with dreamlike swiftness. Afterwards if he ever
looked back to this night it seemed to him that he had from the very
first been trapped. He could not have escaped; he did not pity himself
for this (in all his life-history from the first page to the last there
was no self-pity), but he did ask himself whether he could have avoided
the event: he could not.

The procession settled itself about its Lord: drink was brought: there
was much sham ceremony: subjects knelt and sentences were passed; the
lady in cloth of gold with the naked bosom was proclaimed Queen. The
peasants stood around, mouths agape, the little wild dog, who had been
forgotten, yelped dismally, then broke his rope, crawled to a corner
where he feasted ravenously. Everyone was at ease again. Dancing took
the floor. Figures, fantastic, painted in orange and scarlet and purple,
laughing, singing, kissing, whirled and turned; some fell upon the floor
and lay there. Still in the farther corner the old people, like
characters painted on the wall, played gravely their cards.

Young Osbaldistone, his cap awry, the laced waistcoat unbuttoned,
pursued a girl and encountered Herries. He stopped short.

Herries gravely bowed. Osbaldistone looked. The drink cleared from his
eyes. He straightened himself. He was a cold-tempered, severe lad in his
natural life, debauched enough but ready at any moment to clear
debauchery from his system. He stood back fumbling the hilt of his
sword.

‘Mr. Francis Herries.’

‘Mr. Richard Osbaldistone.’

He yet stuttered a little. The drink was not all cleared. ‘Dick to my
friends,’ then added softly, ‘but not to you, Mr. Herries.’

No one heard him. Herries frowned. He did not want a quarrel with the
boy here, not to-night, Christmas night, and in Peel’s house. He bowed.

‘I wish you good evening,’ he said and turned.

Osbaldistone touched his shoulder. Herries, turning back, was amazed at
the hatred that formed and edged the other’s face like a mask. To hate
him like that! And for what? For nothing—a loss at cards, a girl’s
kiss. No—for what he himself in his very spirit was. And at the
consciousness of that his heart sank and his anger grew.

‘You will not wish me good evening,’ Osbaldistone said. ‘I will have no
good evening from you. Since our meeting of last week I have been
determined on a word with you. You are a cheat, Mr. Herries, a liar
and—it may be—a coward. For the last we will see.’

Then he raised his hand and struck Herries’ cheek. Miraculously this,
too, no one saw. It gave the dreaminess of this strange hour an added
colour—the shrill, discordant music of the violin, the thick steaming
air, the great chimney with its smoky fire, the figures confused in
colour, unreal in chin and eye and limb, the movement striving, it
seemed, to make significant pattern—and yet Herries quite alone in a
frozen place with this boy who hated him.

But no man had ever struck him and had no answer. He frowned sternly on
young Osbaldistone, who was breathing now fiercely as though driven by
some terrific emotion.

‘Not here,’ he said quietly. ‘There is a green behind the house. The
moon is bright. I will join you there in an instant. But take care; we
must go separately. My host to-night is my friend.’

At once, again as in a dream, young Osbaldistone had disappeared.
Herries looked about him. Oh! how desperately he did not wish this to
happen! It was from no fear for himself. But he seemed to be haunted
to-night by the past; something was pulling him back into that other
life that he had abandoned; something would not let him escape.

But he must find a second. It must be, if possible, someone not from
Keswick. The less that this was known. . . . He turned towards the door
and saw the pedlar standing against the wall, smiling ironically and
stroking his thighs with his hands.

‘You can do me a service,’ Herries said. The pedlar followed him out.
The moon was full. No snow was falling.

Against the green behind the house everything was marked as though it
had been cut from black paper, the ridge of hill, the roof-line, the
thick wall of jagged stones.

Osbaldistone was waiting there and Fawcett, a stout, plump youth, absurd
with his blackened face and thick cloak heavily furred. He came to
Herries.

‘For God’s sake, Mr. Herries, this must be avoided. . . .’ His teeth
were chattering.

‘Too damned cold for talk,’ said Osbaldistone.

They spoke in whispers.

‘If Mr. Osbaldistone will apologise for his insult,’ said Herries.

‘I will not,’ said Osbaldistone.

They faced one another: every detail in the scene was clear under the
moon. It was indeed bitterly cold. The frost seemed to creep upon the
flat stones that lay about the field. Herries was aware of the tiniest
details and would remember them all his days. A snail-track glittered in
crystal on the farm wall behind him; a little wind ran over the grass,
fluttering the light snow that lay loosely on the ground, and on the
path beyond the field he could see the moonlight shine on the ice that
the cold was forming on the little pools.

They advanced. At once he knew that Osbaldistone was no swordsman—and a
moment later Osbaldistone knew it too. Again the thought tapped Herries’
heart: ‘How he must hate me to run this crazy risk!’ and again ‘Why?’ In
another moment or two he was aware of the sword’s instinct, something
much more deadly and determined than his own. He could never strike
another’s weapon with his and not feel that separate aliveness in his
blade, as though it said: ‘You have called me out. You have liberated
me. Now I am my own master.’ And now he was very curiously aware that he
must restrain this creature, use all his force and power, otherwise the
boy would be hurt. But as they parried and struck and parried again a
warmth of companionship with his sword swelled in his throat as though
it had said to him: ‘Come. We are comrades now. We march together. You
wouldn’t desert me when you have brought me so far.’

His pride in his accomplishment grew in him. His body grew warm, taut,
eager. He forgot his opponent, felt only the moon shining above that
cold field, the splendid panoply of stars exulting in his skill.

He had the boy utterly at his mercy, and, at the same moment, the boy’s
face swung down to him as though it had been lowered from a height. He
gazed into it and saw terror there, the certain expectation of instant
death.

Death. Yes, one more link in the ridiculous binding chain. This time at
least he would be master of his fortune.

He lowered his blade and stepped back. An instant later Osbaldistone’s
sword had carved his right cheek in two, a deep riven cut from temple to
chin.

His face was flooded with blood. Dropping his sword, the field whirring
about his ears like a top, he sank to his knee.

He heard young Fawcett cry ‘Enough . . .’ and a word about honour, then
the frosted stones leapt up and hit him into darkness. But before he
sank he felt the pedlar’s hand on his arm.

DEATH OF MARGARET HERRIES

Deborah found her way one March afternoon through Stonethwaite Valley
home.

She had been as far as the Stake Pass, turned back, stayed where the
waterfall tumbles over the rocks before the Grasmere turning, looked up
at the quiet hills lying against the quiet sky, then down again to the
tumbling stream that spread fanwise over the white stones shining in the
sun under the water.

Spring was so late here that hardly yet were there signs of it, but
Deborah saw every bud and smiled at every pushing green. The spirit of
spring was in the faint rain-washed blue of the sky, the purple shadow
that hung intangibly about the branches and the pale primrose sunlight
that fell in white patterns on rock and stone. The air was cold and snow
streaked even the lowest hills.

She was a very slight and lonely child as she walked over the green turf
that here in this valley was like the ancient lawns of noble families,
so smooth it was and deep. She would soon be fifteen, but children in
those years were almost women at fifteen. And she had had much to make
her mature. Since her mother had fallen so ill this Christmas, since
Mary had grown so proud and was so often with her cousins in Keswick,
all the duties of the house had fallen on to Deborah. She was hurrying
now for fear of what might have happened while she was away. All last
night she had sat with her mother, fighting a thousand terrors, her
mother’s strange ceaseless talk, the house that was never still, the
calling of the owls, but worst of all the anticipated presence of old
Mrs. Wilson the witch. Since her mother was ill Mrs. Wilson had been for
ever appearing, now here, now there. She spoke little, but at first had
offered again and again her remedies. Deborah could hear her now in her
odd, croaking voice pressing her herbs, her spells, her incantations.
Deb had from the very first been terrified by the old woman, but against
her will she had been forced to realise that there was something
pathetic and something kind in the old wrinkled face, the little eyes
almost hidden by the brown lids, but now anxious and beseeching like an
animal’s. The old snuff-nosed, wrinkled-faced Doctor Absom, their only
resource, once a fine doctor in Carlisle but reduced by liquor to a
peddling house-to-house livelihood, had soon stopped her solicitings. He
had threatened her in so many words with the gaol for a witch. She had
not spoken again after that, but she was always, night and day, hovering
there. It seemed, so her son said, that she had formed some affection
for Margaret Herries. He said, almost apologetically, that he had never
known her take to anyone before as she took to Mistress Herries; and
Deborah, walking now in her cold green valley, seemed still to be
haunted by her presence, and, against her fear, something forced her to
wonder whether after all Mrs. Wilson’s magic might not be of more value
than the old doctor’s dirty ministrations, he never sober, stinking of
snuff, and with bleeding ever his principal remedy.

Poor Margaret! She had been bled enough. There was no more blood left in
her. She was dying. Nothing could save her.

The stroke that had slashed her husband’s face had struck her down. He
had made nothing of it. His face was bound. He had called it a scratch,
but from the first instant she had seen deeper than this, had known that
here was something predestined.

Child though she was, Deborah had marvellously understood her mother’s
longing. She was perhaps the only living soul in the world to understand
what her mother’s love for her father was, how for years she had been
praying the God in whom she believed to give her opportunity to show
that love without foolishness. Now it might be that the moment had come,
and she was too weak to offer it. Not that Herries gave her opportunity:
he would have no pity, no tenderness, no allusion to the event. No one
spoke to him of it. Everyone pretended that nothing had occurred.

But Deborah knew how her mother ached over him as though he were a child
bullied at school and the agony that it was to her, far surpassing her
bodily pain, that she could say nothing. She rose to great heights of
character in these last days.

But for Deborah life had never yet been so threatening. How would it be
when her mother was gone and she alone with her father? Again and again
she tried to beat down her fear of him, but it seemed to be something in
her very veins. There was David. Had there not been David she might have
turned and run back, over the Stake Pass to Langdale and Grasmere,
wandered the world and never returned. So long as David was there she
could endure any test, but would he always be there? Anyone as wonderful
as he must be caught into the outside world. They would call for, shout
for him! And then . . . as the light fell and she thought of the
darkening house, her father with the fresh purple scar that ran from
temple to mouth, catching up one corner of his lip, of her mother’s
room, of Mrs. Wilson, her white cap, the black stick on which she
leaned, she stayed for a moment by the wall of the field and the little
chapel looking back to Glaramara, her hand at her throat, her knees
trembling.

The thought of David reassured her and she smiled. Where he was no harm
could come.

At the turning in of the grassy court two figures made her pause—two
men on horseback. In the fading afternoon light she could not at first
tell who they were, then, realising, amazement stayed her: they were her
uncle Pomfret and her cousin Raiseley.

They had but now arrived, for they got from their horses as she came to
them (she was pleased indeed to see how clumsy Cousin Raiseley was as he
climbed down). Uncle Pomfret greeted her with a confusion of heartiness
and embarrassment, which showed that he was in no way at ease over his
visit. She curtsied and he kissed her, swimming her in an odour of ale
and snuff. He was becoming a mountain of flesh. His belly swung before
him. Cousin Raiseley, who was pallid and thin as his father was purple
and corpulent, bowed to her gravely. She hated her cousin Raiseley
because David did. ‘Hey, little lass . . .’ (her uncle addressed her as
though she were a favourite hound) ‘here’s your old uncle come all the
way through the muck to cheer your poor mother up.’ He threw a cautious
look around him. ‘And your father . . . is he about?’ She replied
quietly. She did not dislike her uncle. There was something kindly and
simple about him. She thought: ‘He hates coming. . . . It’s his
good-nature.’

David came out to them, and Deborah flushed with pride as she saw his
splendid strength beside his pale shambly-kneed cousin. Benjamin was
called to care for the horses, and they all went into the house. What
deep shame Deborah felt as they climbed the stairs! She knew Raiseley
would be seeing everything, sniffing the farm-smells, the dung and the
cesspool, hearing the trickling of water, catching the gleam of the damp
on the walls, and, as they came into the upper hall, marking down the
holes in the furniture, the bareness of the rafters, the tapestry that
was never still against the panelling. She hated Raiseley the more
because her home was shabby.

In the hall now there were David and Mary. It was Mary, of course, who
at once commanded the scene. She flung her arms around her uncle’s
short, thick neck and kissed his ill-shaven chin, then with a smiling
demureness that was beautiful to witness offered her cheek for Raiseley
to kiss, which he did with a very pleasant eagerness.

Uncle Pomfret explained with a great many oaths and confused sentences
that he and their Aunt Jannice had been distressed indeed to hear of the
grave illness of poor Margaret and that Aunt Jannice had sent with him
some cures and recipes.

For himself, would it be possible for him to see her?

The room was dark. The evening glow penetrated the little windows very
thinly. Suddenly a figure bearing high two lighted candlesticks appeared
on the staircase. It was Francis, his face quivering in the blown flame
of the candles. He seemed very tall in that semi-light, in a long,
purple dressing-gown, and the scar was leaping on his face.

It might be that Pomfret had not expected that: he stared, his thick
legs wide planted, his chin raised. He said afterwards to his wife:
‘’Twas no man standing there. Someone raised from the dead. The cut
lined on his cheek.’

Francis said no word, but came slowly down. Then he placed the
candlesticks on the table and holding out his hand said quietly: ‘How
are you, brother?’

Pomfret began a tumbled and confused explanation, but in a whisper as
though he were in church there; finding the whisper arduous, broke into
a kind of congested roar, then sank to a whisper again.

Francis nodded his head.

‘That was kindly thought . . . Margaret would wish to see you. She is
awake—but she is sadly weak.’

He picked up the candles and led the way upstairs again. Pomfret,
stepping with his big feet as though on eggs, followed him.

The children, left alone together, were embarrassed. Even Mary,
conscious perhaps that the eyes of her brother and sister were upon her,
had very little to say. At last Raiseley muttered something about going
to see after the horses. He started down the stairs, and David stoutly
marched after him. In the dusk, wrapped in the cold air, the two stood
stiffly side by side. At last Raiseley, patronage in every word that he
uttered, said:

‘’Tis isolated here . . . and muck at every step.’

David, anger throbbing in his throat, answered:

‘It is no place for soft bodies.’

‘Nor for active minds,’ Raiseley answered.

‘Keswick,’ David said with a scornful laugh, ‘is scarcely the Athens of
the world.’ (He thought this a fine phrase and told Deb of it
afterwards.)

Raiseley sniffed. He had a maddening habit in this as though he suffered
from a perpetual cold.

‘I wonder, cousin,’ he said, ‘that you can endure the mud and rain and
nothing but yokels for company. But maybe it suits you.’

‘It does,’ David answered. ‘Better than by your looks Keswick might.’

Raiseley laughed. ‘Keswick is no abiding-place. I shall be in London in
a six-months.’

‘Well,’ said David, ‘for me you can keep your London. There is air here
and space, horses to ride and hills to climb. There is no finer spot in
England.’

‘I can understand that you would find it so,’ Raiseley answered.

The poor white worm—David thought—one crack with the singlestick and
he’d go over. One push with the thumb and down he’d be! He hated him
with every pulse in his body, but at the heart of the hate there was a
sort of wistfulness. He would be clever, Raiseley, and getting a fine
education. Already he would know so many things that David would never
know.

The darkness fell. Benjamin held a flare. The horses clamped with their
hoofs on the grassy stones. The two boys stood without speaking, hating
one another. Then the two men came out. They were very quiet. Margaret
on her death-bed had brought them closer together than they had ever
been or would be. Pomfret’s simple heart was deeply touched.

‘Poor soul,’ he said. ‘Poor soul . . .’

‘She is a woman of great courage,’ Francis said.

‘Poor Margaret,’ their voices echoed on the night air. Pomfret and his
son climbed on to their horses.

‘That was kindly of you, brother,’ Francis said, and held for a moment
Pomfret’s hand.

‘Come and visit us. There is a bed for thee,’ Pomfret answered, bent
down and kissed his brother’s cheek. Then they rode away, their horses
stumbling over the dark track.

Francis went back into the house. From these few whispered words both
children had realised that their mother was indeed dying. They stood
there close together in the dark courtyard, the wind that had suddenly
risen whistling about their heads. Deborah began to cry. She clung to
David, who put his arm around her, holding her very close. She was a
little hysterical with lack of sleep, too incessant labour, fear of the
future.

‘Oh, David, I’m frightened. Mother will die and you will go into the
world and I shall be left here with father. . . . I don’t want to be
left. . . . I don’t want to be left. ’Tis cruel, this valley, when you
are alone in it, and there are spirits in the house. The house hates us.
There has been no luck for us since we came to it, and I’m weary of the
mice and the holes and the shabbiness that will not be cleaned. . . .
Oh, David, don’t leave me here alone. . . . Don’t leave me!’

She sobbed on his breast and he comforted her. ‘Deb, little Deb. There’s
no fear. I’ll not leave you. Mother will be happier gone. She was never
rightly settled here and the rain and wind destroyed her. Poor mother.
She will be warm again and comforted if there’s a heaven as they say,
and if there’s none she’ll not be aware of it. But, Deborah, you must
not fear father. He’s worst with anyone who fears him.

‘He will love you an you go to him bravely. He has himself a shyness of
spirit. See how happy the three of us will be together—and you are the
bravest of us all. The house is well enough. I’d have it a thousand
times before that popinjay place of Uncle Pomfret’s in Keswick.

‘And I’ll not leave you. I’ll never leave you. You are the only woman in
all the world I love, Deb, save our mother.’

Deborah smiled through her tears.

‘There’ll be a woman for you one day: every woman who sees you must love
you.’

‘Ah, but it takes two for that,’ David answered laughing. ‘There was a
girl once up by Seathwaite hit my horse with her stick. Do you know,
Deb, it was but a moment and I’ve never seen her since, but she had a
face like a laughing rose. . . . For the rest they are all alike. I
warrant marriage is a false tale. I would be free, and who is free with
a wife?’

Deborah sighed.

‘I shall be left one day. . . . ’Tis so silly, but although I’m fourteen
years I’m frightened of the dark. . . . The true dark when there are
only owls and mice. And Mistress Wilson. David, is she truly a witch?’
She dropped her voice to a low whisper.

David tightened his arm round her. ‘I think she’s a witch,’ he whispered
back. ‘She never sleeps. She has a fire with blue flame. She makes dolls
of wax. I’ve seen one with a needle through. But she cannot touch thee,
Deb. . . . Christ is at the back of thee, and all the holy angels.’

‘Maybe,’ Deborah answered, shivering against his breast, ‘she is a good
witch. I’m sure she means no ill to our mother. Maybe she would have
cured her.’

But David shook his head. ‘Better our mother die than be cured of the
Devil,’ he answered. Then he folded his little sister yet more closely
in his arms and kissed her.

‘I will swear an oath, here in this place, never to leave you, Deborah.
An I marry, you come also. And if I do not marry, you shall ever keep
house for me and father. Now listen, little sister, I will swear. By
Christ and His holy angels I, David Scott Herries, will never, while
breath is in my body, leave thee, Deborah Herries—unless,’ he hurriedly
added, ‘there is hunting on the hills or travelling to see new
countries—an adventure, you understand. You would not hold me from
that.’

‘I would not hold you from anything,’ Deborah answered, standing on
tiptoe to kiss him. ‘I am not that sort of selfish woman. I know that
you will have a grand life, David, of adventure and enterprise, and do
you think I would hold you back? I love you too well.’

She was quite happy now, and, their arms around one another, they went
into the house.

Francis Herries had gone to his wife’s room. He sat there beside the big
bed, very patient, staring into the round light of the two candles.
Margaret lay, her eyes closed, breathing stertorously. There were beads
of sweat on her brow, and her two hands, tightly clenched, lay on the
coverlet. Little Absom had gone for a meal but would return. It might
well be that Margaret would die before he came back, but it did not
matter; he could do nothing.

Herries sat there without moving, looking at his wife. He had never
loved Margaret: he did not love her now nor did he let sentiment chafe
him, but, as he watched her, he was sorry that her life had been spent
with a man whom she could not understand.

It was this lack of comprehension that affected him most deeply as he
sat there. She had loved him, but had not understood him at all. He had
not loved her, but had understood her only too well.

All human relationships seemed to him miserable things as he sat
there—all false, all betraying. Well, for himself, it did not matter.
On the Christmas night at the moment when young Osbaldistone had slashed
his cheek, he had finished with human beings. As he felt the blood gush
over his face he had, at that instant, stepped aside from all his
fellows. He had been coming to that point through many months. Now the
division was made.

In the weeks that had followed, he had nursed his cut with a quiet sense
of completion. He knew that he would be marked for life and terribly,
that this would be the first thought that all men would have, the first
thing that they would see.

He could look back now and understand that for years he had been slowly
separating himself from his fellow-men. His fault or theirs, what
mattered it? Their fault because he had a dream that could not be
fulfilled, or his because he was ever putting himself wrong with them by
loss of temper or arrogance or other passion? So he was done with them.
Even poor Margaret was leaving him. Only David remained. David he could
not separate himself from, but he was sure that the hour would come when
David too would go. But that would be for David to recognise.

And instead of human beings, he would embrace this valley, this soil,
this house itself. He had plans that he would get some land from Peel,
that he would sow corn, grow trees perhaps, have cattle. He would work
with his own hands here. All day and every day during those last weeks
he had, when he had not been at Margaret’s side, been digging and
cutting wood, mending holes, carrying water, Ben, Wilson, David,
assisting, but going and coming, whereas he stayed, sweat pouring from
him, his nails grimed with dirt, his face raised to Glaramara, then bent
again to the ground. And it seemed to him that the soil came and built
itself about his heart. He was earthed in: the smell and the tang and
the grit of it were in his eyes and his nostrils. He was growing his own
hair. Soon it would be long about his brows. His heavy boots were caked
with mud, and when he straightened himself this fresh, sharp ache in his
back called out to him with a friendly voice.

Margaret stirred. Her hands rose and fell with a little flutter as he
had so often seen them do, and a rush of memory swept over him. How
badly he had treated her, and how she had asked to be badly treated!
What absurd ironic fate had driven them together? Why was life thus, so
that you were caught of your own good intentions and held in a trap to
which there was no purpose? He had meant to do her kindness and had done
her nothing but ill: but was not that indeed the whole motto of his
life?

He could think of so many occasions when he had returned from some ride
or visit meaning so many courtesies to her, and she, in the very first
word, had roused his ironic irritation. And how poor was he that,
knowing her love for him and that she was stupid and could not help
herself, he had not been kinder to her, more indulgent! His sins had
been frightful, thrusting his mistresses under her very nose, coming
back drunk to her and forcing her against her will, until in the last
matter of Alice Press he had been most evil of all. For all this he must
pay, and when the day came for payment he was not to squeal about
injustice.

He thought then of her many, many kindnesses and of her great patience,
but the thought of her patience only again exasperated him. Why had she
been so patient? It would have been better had she been rash with him
sometimes and called him what he was. And so, as most men do who have
ill-treated their wives, he came to an odd mixture of feelings, of shame
and irritation, of self-blame and wonder that women could be so
persistently provoking. At least he was glad that now she suffered no
pain.

She stirred and woke. She looked about her without raising her head from
the pillow. Then she saw him and smiled, and then, as she had done on a
thousand other occasions, checked her smile lest he should think it
foolish.

‘What hour is it, Francis?’ she asked him in a thin, very distant voice.

‘Six of the clock,’ he said, bending forward and taking her hand. That
pleased her and she smiled again.

‘My head is very clear . . . I have had strange dreams. I would speak to
David. May I?’

He nodded. That ‘May I?’ touched him deeply. In the first year of their
marriage when she had been a young girl and first afraid of him, she had
said about this or that little pleasure and excitement, ‘May I?’ and
often enough he had answered: ‘No, you may not.’

Now he nodded and went from the room to fetch his son.

He sent David in. The boy came and stood by the bed, his breadth
blocking the window. Then a terrible pity and tenderness for his mother,
self-reproach for himself, and a consciousness of the imminence of death
wrung his heart. He dropped on his knees, put out his great brown hands
and took her thin white ones. He seemed for the first time in his life
now to realise her. There had always been somebody or something else
standing in his view of her. He had caught from early babyhood something
of his father’s idea of her. Now, when it was too late, she seemed to
stand before him as she really was, going on this journey all alone with
no one to help her. The room was so dark that it was only by the
candlelight that he saw her face, and in that flickering gleam she was
not foolish any more—she had courage and dignity, and these things all
her life she had never seemed to him to have before.

She put up her hand and stroked his hair. Her voice was faint and he had
to lean nearer to her to catch her words. Her arm fell about his neck.

‘Davy, I’ve not been a wise mother to you . . . I’ve not been a wise
woman, but I have loved you with all my heart.’

‘I know you have, mother,’ he answered.

‘I want you to promise me . . . never to leave your father.’

‘I will never leave my father.’

‘It is strange,’ she looked at him rather timidly, ‘that love does not
bring understanding. I have loved Francis so much but have never known
the way to be easy with him.’ She paused between the sentences, and
David heard the wind tugging at the leaded panes, and in some way the
little sound, as of a friendly companion, was comforting and
understanding.

‘It is too late now for me not to fear your father. Oh, Davy, how have I
said again and again, “Now you must not mind him,” but I have always
minded him and the sight of him has made my heart beat and driven every
word from my head. I know so well why he should be irritated with me.
How should I not know, being so irritated with myself? But that is all
over . . . past . . . away . . .’ She stopped, lay back, closed her
eyes. David placed his arm around her and held her close to him. He
could feel the sweat of her body beneath the nightdress. ‘I meant to
make him proud of me and I have not. I meant that he should continue in
love with me and he was not. I meant many things and have not wrought
them, but—’ and here her voice grew stronger and she seemed to wake to
new life, ‘I have given birth to a fine son who will be heard of in the
world. Oh, I am proud of you, Davy, my darling, my darling.’

He held her closer, moved to his very soul, because in all these years
she had never told him how she loved him.

‘And you are strong and grand and fearless. You will be a man among men
so that they look up to you and come to you. So, Davy, my darling, you
must never leave your father, who is alone and will be more alone as the
years go.’ She raised herself a little on David’s arm.

‘Breed sons, my David. Great, strong-limbed men like yourself. Davy,
Davy . . .’ Her hand clutched his sleeve. ‘I am no Herries, but I have
borne a son to the Herries. Though they have mocked me, in my womb was
carried the finest of them all, and from your seed, David, all the grand
Herries shall come.’ She sank back and the strangest elfin smile came to
her lips. ‘Your aunt and your uncle have bred niddering children, but
two hundred years hence there shall be Herries who shall know that it
was I, Margaret Herries, who gave suck to the man of them all. . . .
Your children, Davy . . . You must have men children to carry the
Herries name farther . . . farther . . . farther . . .’ She seemed
exhausted. She lay back on the pillow and he bent and stroked her
forehead. ‘Wrong thoughts, Davy,’ she whispered, ‘for a dying woman, but
they have struck your father in the face and your sons must revenge
. . . I have loved him so . . . even now to have his cheek against mine,
his poor wounded cheek.’

‘Shall I call him, mother?’ David whispered.

‘Nay.’ She smiled again. ‘He would not know what to do or say. He was
ever awkward in a scene. Like a child . . . I would have been mother to
him rather than wife, but he would not allow me. Dear Francis . . .
Francis, dear . . .’

Then she motioned him to raise her up. Her face was against his. She
kissed him. Her lips were damp with sweat.

‘Is it not odd that I who have been afraid all my life should not now be
afraid? Our good Lord understandeth my awkwardness. His arms are around
me. . . . To die is simpler than to live. . . .’

He laid her down again. Her hand closed with exceeding tightness about
his.

‘Dear Francis. . . . Call him, Davy . . . I am dying.’

Gently he unloosed his hand, went to the door and called softly:
‘Father, father.’

Francis came in, and kneeling by the bed put his arms round her and held
her as her spirit passed.

Her last word uttered against his cheek: ‘Francis, dear.’

END OF PART I