The Weavers: Chapter 20

Chapter 20

EACH AFTER HIS OWN ORDER

With the passing years new feelings had grown up in the heart of Luke
Claridge. Once David's destiny and career were his own peculiar and
self-assumed responsibility. "Inwardly convicted," he had wrenched the
lad away from the natural circumstances of his life, and created a scheme
of existence for him out of his own conscience--a pious egoist.

After David went to Egypt, however, his mind involuntarily formed the
resolution that "Davy and God should work it out together."

He had grown very old in appearance, and his quiet face was almost
painfully white; but the eyes burned with more fire than in the past. As
the day approached when David should arrive in England, he walked by
himself continuously, oblivious of the world round him. He spoke to no
one, save the wizened Elder Meacham, and to John Fairley, who rightly
felt that he had a share in the making of Claridge Pasha.

With head perched in the air, and face half hidden in his great white
collar, the wizened Elder, stopping Luke Claridge in the street one day,
said:

"Does thee think the lad will ride in Pharaoh's chariot here?"

There were sly lines of humour about the mouth of the wizened Elder as he
spoke, but Luke Claridge did not see.

"Pride is far from his heart," he answered portentously. "He will ride in
no chariot. He has written that he will walk here from Heddington, and
none is to meet him."

"He will come by the cross-roads, perhaps," rejoined the other piously.
"Well, well, memory is a flower or a rod, as John Fox said, and the
cross-roads have memories for him."

Again flashes of humour crossed his face, for he had a wide humanity, of
insufficient exercise.

"He has made full atonement, and thee does ill to recall the past,
Reuben," rejoined the other sternly.

"If he has done no more that needs atonement than he did that day at the
cross-roads, then has his history been worthy of Hamley," rejoined the
wizened Elder, eyes shut and head buried in his collar. "Hamley made
him--Hamley made him. We did not spare advice, or example, or any
correction that came to our minds--indeed, it was almost a luxury. Think
you, does he still play the flute--an instrument none too grave, Luke?"

But, to this, Luke Claridge exclaimed impatiently and hastened on; and
the little wizened Elder chuckled to himself all the way to the house of
John Fairley. None in Hamley took such pride in David as did these two
old men, who had loved him from a child, but had discreetly hidden their
favour, save to each other. Many times they had met and prayed together
in the weeks when his life was in notorious danger in the Soudan.

As David walked through the streets of Heddington making for the open
country, he was conscious of a new feeling regarding the place. It was
familiar, but in a new sense. Its grimy, narrow streets, unlovely houses,
with shut windows, summer though it was, and no softening influences
anywhere, save here and there a box of sickly geraniums in the windows,
all struck his mind in a way they had never done before. A mile away were
the green fields, the woods, the roadsides gay with flowers and
shrubs-loveliness was but over the wall, as it were; yet here the
barrack-like houses, the grey, harsh streets, seemed like prison walls,
and the people in them prisoners who, with every legal right to call
themselves free, were as much captives as the criminal on some small
island in a dangerous sea. Escape--where? Into the gulf of no work and
degradation?

They never lifted their eyes above the day's labour. They were scarce
conscious of anything beyond. What were their pleasures? They had
imitations of pleasures. To them a funeral or a wedding, a riot or a
vociferous band, a dog-fight or a strike, were alike in this, that they
quickened feelings which carried them out of themselves, gave them a
sense of intoxication.

Intoxication? David remembered the far-off day of his own wild rebellion
in Hamley. From that day forward he had better realised that in the
hearts of so many of the human race there was a passion to forget
themselves; to blot out, if for a moment only, the troubles of life and
time; or, by creating a false air of exaltation, to rise above them. Once
in the desert, when men were dying round him of fever and dysentery, he
had been obliged, exhausted and ill, scarce able to drag himself from his
bed, to resort to an opiate to allay his own sufferings, that he might
minister to others. He remembered how, in the atmosphere it had
created--an intoxication, a soothing exhilaration and pervasive
thrill--he had saved so many of his followers. Since then the temptation
had come upon him often when trouble weighed or difficulties surrounded
him--accompanied always by recurrence of fever--to resort to the
insidious medicine. Though he had fought the temptation with every inch
of his strength, he could too well understand those who sought for
"surcease of pain".

          "Seeking for surcease of pain,
          Pilgrim to Lethe I came;
          Drank not, for pride was too keen,
          Stung by the sound of a name!"

As the plough of action had gone deep into his life and laid bare his
nature to the light, there had been exposed things which struggled for
life and power in him, with the fiery strength which only evil has.

The western heavens were aglow. On every hand the gorse and the may were
in bloom, the lilacs were coming to their end, but wild rhododendrons
were glowing in the bracken, as he stepped along the road towards the
place where he was born. Though every tree and roadmark was familiar, yet
he was conscious of a new outlook. He had left these quiet scenes
inexperienced and untravelled, to be thrust suddenly into the thick of a
struggle of nations over a sick land. He had worked in a vortex of
debilitating local intrigue. All who had to do with Egypt gained except
herself, and if she moved in revolt or agony, they threatened her. Once
when resisting the pressure and the threats of war of a foreign
diplomatist, he had, after a trying hour, written to Faith in a burst of
passionate complaint, and his letter had ended with these words.

          "In your onward march, O men,
          White of face, in promise whiter,
          You unsheath the sword, and then
          Blame the wronged as the fighter.
          "Time, ah, Time, rolls onward o'er
          All these foetid fields of evil,
          While hard at the nation's core
          Eats the burning rust and weevill
          "Nathless, out beyond the stars
          Reigns the Wiser and the Stronger,
          Seeing in all strifes and wars
          Who the wronged, who the wronger."

Privately he had spoken thus, but before the world he had given way to no
impulse, in silence finding safety from the temptation to diplomatic
evasion. Looking back over five years, he felt now that the sum of his
accomplishment had been small.

He did not realise the truth. When his hand was almost upon the object
for which he had toiled and striven--whether pacifying a tribe, meeting a
loan by honest means, building a barrage, irrigating the land, financing
a new industry, or experimenting in cotton--it suddenly eluded him.
Nahoum had snatched it away by subterranean wires. On such occasions
Nahoum would shrug his shoulders, and say with a sigh, "Ah, my friend,
let us begin again. We are both young; time is with us; and we will
flourish palms in the face of Europe yet. We have our course set by a
bright star. We will continue."

Yet, withal, David was the true altruist. Even now as he walked this road
which led to his old home, dear to him beyond all else, his thoughts kept
flying to the Nile and to the desert.

Suddenly he stopped. He was at the cross-roads. Here he had met Kate
Heaver, here he had shamed his neighbours--and begun his work in life. He
stood for a moment, smiling, as he looked at the stone where he had sat
those years ago, his hand feeling instinctively for his flute. Presently
he turned to the dusty road again.

Walking quickly away, he swung into the path of the wood which would
bring him by a short cut to Hamley, past Soolsby's cottage. Here was the
old peace, the old joy of solitude among the healing trees. Experience
had broadened his life, had given him a vast theatre of work; but the
smell of the woods, the touch of the turf, the whispering of the trees,
the song of the birds, had the ancient entry to his heart.

At last he emerged on the hill where Soolsby lived. He had not meant, if
he could help it, to speak to any one until he had entered the garden of
the Red Mansion, but he had inadvertently come upon this place where he
had spent the most momentous days of his life, and a feeling stronger
than he cared to resist drew him to the open doorway. The afternoon sun
was beating in over the threshold as he reached it, and, at his footstep,
a figure started forward from the shadow of a corner.

It was Kate Heaver.

Surprise, then pain showed in her face; she flushed, was agitated.

"I am sorry. It's too bad--it's hard on him you should see," she said in
a breath, and turned her head away for an instant; but presently looked
him in the face again, all trembling and eager. "He'll be sorry enough
to-morrow," she added solicitously, and drew away from something, she had
been trying to hide.

Then David saw. On a bench against a wall lay old Soolsby--drunk. A cloud
passed across his face and left it pale.

"Of course," he said simply, and went over and touched the heaving
shoulders reflectively. "Poor Soolsby!"

"He's been sober four years--over four," she said eagerly. "When he knew
you'd come again, he got wild, and he would have the drink in spite of
all. Walking from Heddington, I saw him at the tavern, and brought him
home."

"At the tavern--" David said reflectively.

"The Fox and Goose, sir." She turned her face away again, and David's
head came up with a quick motion. There it was, five years ago, that he
had drunk at the bar, and had fought Jasper Kimber.

"Poor fellow!" he said again, and listened to Soolsby's stertorous
breathing, as a physician looks at a patient whose case he cannot
control, does not wholly understand.

The hand of the sleeping man was suddenly raised, his head gave a jerk,
and he said mumblingly: "Claridge for ever!"

Kate nervously intervened. "It fair beat him, your coming back, sir. It's
awful temptation, the drink. I lived in it for years, and it's cruel hard
to fight it when you're worked up either way, sorrow or joy. There's a
real pleasure in being drunk, I'm sure. While it lasts you're rich, and
you're young, and you don't care what happens. It's kind of you to take
it like this, sir, seeing you've never been tempted and mightn't
understand." David shook his head sadly, and looked at Soolsby in
silence.

"I don't suppose he took a quarter what he used to take, but it made him
drunk. 'Twas but a minute of madness. You've saved him right enough."

"I was not blaming him. I understand--I understand."

He looked at her clearly. She was healthy and fine-looking, with large,
eloquent eyes. Her dress was severe and quiet, as became her
occupation--a plain, dark grey, but the shapely fulness of the figure
gave softness to the outlines. It was no wonder Jasper Kimber wished to
marry her; and, if he did, the future of the man was sure. She had a
temperament which might have made her an adventuress--or an opera-singer.
She had been touched in time, and she had never looked back.

"You are with Lady Eglington now, I have heard?" he asked.

She nodded.

"It was hard for you in London at first?"

She met his look steadily. "It was easy in a way. I could see round me
what was the right thing to do. Oh, that was what was so awful in the old
life over there at Heddington,"--she pointed beyond the hill, "we didn't
know what was good and what was bad. The poor people in big
working-places like Heddington ain't much better than heathens, leastways
as to most things that matter. They haven't got a sensible religion, not
one that gets down into what they do. The parson doesn't reach them--he
talks about church and the sacraments, and they don't get at what good
it's going to do them. And the chapel preachers ain't much better. They
talk and sing and pray, when what the people want is light, and hot
water, and soap, and being shown how to live, and how to bring up
children healthy and strong, and decent-cooked food. I'd have
food-hospitals if I could, and I'd give the children in the schools one
good meal a day. I'm sure the children of the poor go wrong and bad more
through the way they live than anything. If only they was taught
right--not as though they was paupers! Give me enough nurses of the right
sort, and enough good, plain cooks, and meat three times a week, and milk
and bread and rice and porridge every day, and I'd make a new place of
any town in England in a year. I'd--"

She stopped all at once, however, and flushing, said: "I didn't stop to
think I was talking to you, sir."

"I am glad you speak to me so," he answered gently. "You and I are both
reformers at heart."

"Me? I've done nothing, sir, not any good to anybody or anything."

"Not to Jasper Kimber?"

"You did that, sir; he says so; he says you made him."

A quick laugh passed David's lips. "Men are not made so easily. I think I
know the trowel and the mortar that built that wall! Thee will marry him,
friend?"

Her eyes burned as she looked at him. She had been eternally dispossessed
of what every woman has the right to have--one memory possessing the
elements of beauty. Even if it remain but for the moment, yet that moment
is hers by right of her sex, which is denied the wider rights of those
they love and serve. She had tasted the cup of bitterness and drunk of
the waters of sacrifice. Married life had no lure for her. She wanted
none of it. The seed of service had, however, taken root in a nature full
of fire and light and power, undisciplined and undeveloped as it was. She
wished to do something--the spirit of toil, the first habit of the life
of the poor, the natural medium for the good that may be in them, had
possession of her.

This man was to her the symbol of work. To have cared for his home, to
have looked after his daily needs, to have sheltered him humbly from
little things, would have been her one true happiness. And this was
denied her. Had she been a man, it would have been so easy. She could
have offered to be his servant; could have done those things which she
could do better than any, since hers would be a heart-service.

But even as she looked at him now, she had a flash of insight and
prescience. She had, from little things said or done, from newspapers
marked and a hundred small indications, made up her mind that her
mistress's mind dwelt much upon "the Egyptian." The thought flashed now
that she might serve this man, after all; that a day might come when she
could say that she had played a part in his happiness, in return for all
he had done for her. Life had its chances--and strange things had
happened. In her own mind she had decided that her mistress was not
happy, and who could tell what might happen? Men did not live for ever!
The thought came and went, but it left behind a determination to answer
David as she felt.

"I will not marry Jasper," she answered slowly. "I want work, not
marriage."

"There would be both," he urged.

"With women there is the one or the other, not both."

"Thee could help him. He has done credit to himself, and he can do good
work for England. Thee can help him."

"I want work alone, not marriage, sir."

"He would pay thee his debt."

"He owes me nothing. What happened was no fault of his, but of the life
we were born in. He tired of me, and left me. Husbands tire of their
wives, but stay on and beat them."

"He drove thee mad almost, I remember."

"Wives go mad and are never cured, so many of them. I've seen them die,
poor things, and leave the little ones behind. I had the luck wi' me. I
took the right turning at the cross-roads yonder."

"Thee must be Jasper's wife if he asks thee again," he urged.

"He will come when I call, but I will not call," she answered.

"But still thee will marry him when the heart is ready," he persisted.
"It shall be ready soon. He needs thee. Good-bye, friend. Leave Soolsby
alone. He will be safe. And do not tell him that I have seen him so." He
stooped over and touched the old man's shoulder gently.

He held out his hand to her. She took it, then suddenly leaned over and
kissed it. She could not speak.

He stepped to the door and looked out. Behind the Red Mansion the sun was
setting, and the far garden looked cool and sweet. He gave a happy sigh,
and stepped out and down.

As he disappeared, the woman dropped into a chair, her arms upon a table.
Her body shook with sobs. She sat there for an hour, and then, when the
sun was setting, she left the drunken man sleeping, and made her way down
the hill to the Cloistered House. Entering, she was summoned to her
mistress's room. "I did not expect my lady so soon," she said, surprised.

"No; we came sooner than we expected. Where have you been?"

"At Soolsby's hut on the hill, my lady."

"Who is Soolsby?"

Kate told her all she knew, and of what had happened that afternoon--but
not all.

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