Ketel's Parlour
Barbara sat on a stool in the mouth of the cave, reading aloud Pope's translation of the Iliad to Timothy Hadwin. The old man watched the girl narrowly, and felt his mind swing back through the ages to the days of Greek and Trojan.
Had Barbara lived then she would have been called the daughter of a god. Thetis of the Silver-foot ought to have been her mother, and some strong warrior king her father. She would have made a worthy sister to Achilles, a fit wife for Hector, tamer of horses. A wife! a wife! Timothy wondered. Would Barbara Lynn ever become the wife of some good, honest, plain man, and chain her mind to making and mending, the bearing of children, the ordinary toils of a married woman's life. He could not imagine her as such. She was in her fitting place as a herder of sheep upon the mountains, where sun and tempest were her familiar friends. Would she be happier if her lot brought her down from the clouds to the earth? Would not the four grey walls of a cottage choke her? He felt that in her nature was an intensity of feeling so great, that it was more likely to bring her sorrow than happiness.
The hour was noon of a summer's day. All around the heat shimmered upon rock and grass; the tarn lay white and motionless; Thundergay was wrapped in a haze; not a breath of air stirred the fern fronds.
Barbara's voice when she read had an exaltation, which it lacked in ordinary conversation. Her eyes, also, had lost their prevailing meditativeness, and shone with an inner light. She thrilled to the depths of her soul with the lives of the people about whom she read. Her ears were alert to catch the voices still echoing down the centuries.
Timothy Hadwin had told her that nothing which happened had an end. No thought ever thought, no action ever committed could cease. Just as a pebble, dropped into the sea, caused waves to spread all about it, which rolled on and on in ever widening circles till they communicated their movements to the edges of the world, so the accumulated energy of the past was still surging around, beating upon human brains, and influencing the latest born of man, though its origin had been swallowed up and forgotten in the darkness of antiquity.
Barbara believed this. Through books she reached direct contact with the past. She was a vessel into which the magic old wine could be poured, and it warmed her, filled her serene mind with passions and sympathies, unknown to it at other times.
Often through the week Barbara went to Timothy Hadwin's cottage, or he came to Ketel's Parlour to hear her read, and to impart some of his knowledge to her hungry soul. The brief hour was a treasure snatched from the crowded commonplaces of the day, and was valued accordingly.
Just now, Barbara was reading about the ransoming of Hector's body. Her voice thrilled, and her eyes grew luminous as she pictured the old king stealing across the plain by night with a wain filled with rich vestments, tripods, shining cauldrons, and a priceless bowl of gold to offer them in return for the dead body of his son. She could see the whole scene—the city of Troy with its battlements and towers vaguely outlined against the darkness, the dreadful plain of war, the long black boats of the Greeks, behind which sounded the ever-rolling sea. She saw Achilles' hut with its palisades, and pine bolt, that three strong men were wont to drive home at night, though Achilles could drive it home himself. And near by lay the body of Hector, face-downwards in the dust, as Achilles had left him after dragging him round the barrow of his dead friend at the dawn of day. Her eyes filled with tears for Hector, tamer of horses, Hector of the glancing helm, who strove against fate; but strove in vain, who was still beloved of Jove, and cared for in death by the god of the winged sandals, who closed his wounds, and kept his flesh from corruption.
But that which touched her most was Achilles' speech to the old king, when he came a suppliant to his hut in the night. The two urns standing by the throne of Jupiter, one full of curses, one full of blessings arrested her attention. Was it not true? Did the god not deal a mingled lot to most of his creatures, but gave them an enduring soul to bear it? The best and most beautiful things in the world were fraught with sorrow. The sunset often made her sad; equally sad sounded the singing of birds in spring; and love, the love of father, mother, husband, child, was saddest of all. This she had learnt among her friends of the dale.
She read on to the end of the book, where the mourners sat down to the sepulchral feast:
"And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade."
Then she closed the volume and looked at Timothy.
"Why do we sup it so eagerly?" she asked. "It's a poisoned cup to some, a bitter one to most, and sweet only to a few, a very few."
The old man knew that she referred to life.
"There was a preacher once," he said, "who thought it a burden too heavy to be borne. He believed in re-birth, countless re-births through generations, and the idea filled him with despair. His name was Gautama, but people called him Buddha, the Enlightened One, the Enlightener. He found a way of salvation and opened it to men."
"Was it a good way?"
"Judge for thyself, Barbara. The mind" he said, "approaching the eternal, has attained to the extinction of all desires?"
She mused for a moment upon the words.
"I don't like them," she replied, "If I had no desires I shouldn't be Barbara Lynn but a lump of clay."
"Then drink the cup. Buddha turned it upside down so that it could hold nothing. He emptied it of the sweetness as well as the bitterness. But thou, hold it up to be filled and drink."
"I shall have sorrow, Timothy?"
"Yes, child."
"Pain and disappointment."
"It is the lot of those who would dig to find the riches of their own nature."
"The soil might be poor, and suffering turn up nought but dead ashes."
"Tears fertilize it, Barbara."
"Do you think that's the reason we have so much to bear? Should we be like weakly flowers, things that would wither up with the heat of the sun, or the cold winds o' winter, if suffering did not set us to deep trenching?"
All the vehemence had died out of her voice now. Speech had sunk to the meditative tones of every day life.
"Contentment leads to shallowness," said the old man. "If you had been born in a great house instead of an upland farm, I doubt if you would have striven so hard to know and understand things that lie far out of your beaten track."
"I've got a bitter envy towards those who have chances denied to me."
"To some learning may be the goal; to you it may be the means to a higher goal."
"What dost mean, Timothy?"
"You're a better scholar at self-discipline than at your books, my lass."
Her face fell and she looked disappointed.
"Don't I do well? Will Peter think I have not improved?"
He patted her shoulder.
"You do very well indeed. I'm proud of you."
Her brow flushed with pleasure and she rose, dwarfing and bedimming the little man with her large frame and golden head.
"To-morrow you'll come to me at the cottage," he said.
She nodded, and they parted, he going down the dale, and she, leaping like a deer up the fellside, to the sheep pastures high upon Thundergay.
She paused on a rocky point and looked back. Below her lay Swirtle Tarn, and far, far off the shining waters of the great mere. She could see Greystones, no bigger than a pebble, lying under the cliffs, and the trees of Cringel Forest like a bundle of green wool fallen down between a split in the hills. Troy, and the battle-field, and the long black boats had vanished; but the land was mysterious with the epic of her own life.
She did not ask herself the reason for this emergence of her spirit into fuller existence. But she was aware of a veil which had been drawn over the arduous toils of the day, and the unveiling of beautiful things that made a new setting to her mind.
Peter Fleming was coming back. She often thought of Peter, and wondered what changes he would bring to the lonely life of the fells. But her imagination was nebulous; it pictured nothing concrete; she was content to let her mind hover round the sun-glistening vapour and leave the realisation for the unfolding of time.
Surprise, which gave rise to many wild rumours in the dale, had greeted the announcement that Peter Fleming was going to keep school. No one could think of an adequate reason for such a descent from the pinnacle of learning where he stood. Anyone could keep school, but few had the opportunity or ability to become a bishop. Dusty John said little, but Peter's mother lost her disappointment at the turn of affairs in having the school-room cleaned for her son, in seeing the moss scraped from the doorstep, and in herself hanging curtains in all the windows. Peter would live at home, and sleep in his attic under the mill-house roof, but the school-parlour was to be his study. There he could have silence, his books, and grow wise.
The village school of High Fold was a little stone building standing just within the fringe of Cringel Forest. The road ran by it, and the trees crowded so closely around, that they seemed to jostle each other in their eagerness to peer through the doors and windows. A kitchen, bed-chamber and parlour, and a long room fitted with desks and benches made up the interior, the walls of which were plastered and white-washed, and patterned by the ever-moving shadows of the encroaching trees. There the rustle of leaves was never silent. A cobbled path led from road to threshold. Just now, in the late summer, it was bordered on either side by a rank growth of hemlock.
Barbara had passed by it several times lately, and looked at it with speculative interest. She thought of a house as the shell of the mind that inhabited it. Greystones was the cipher of her great-grandmother's personality. The old woman had made it what it was, had given it an atmosphere of a wild, yet living, past. What would Peter make of the little green-bowered cot in Cringel Forest? She pondered upon Peter all through the day, which sped with winged feet.
In the evening Barbara went home. Swirtle Tarn smoked like a cauldron of boiling water as she threaded its lonely shore. The vapour swirled up in spiral form, and when it reached the light of the moon, appeared most strange and beautiful, like columns of white marble rising from a floor of polished blue stone. It was late, and Lucy must have gone to bed some time ago; yet she would linger for a while to enjoy the beauty of the night.
The air was very still; even the waterfalls were subdued; the birds were silent; the flocks were asleep; everything looked unsubstantial.
Barbara thought that she had never before felt quite the same sense of mystery in the night. Surely that which she looked upon was not the material form of the earth, but its spiritual body! Were not those white vapours its thoughts going up to the Eternal Being who gave them? All thoughts had the same origin. The universe was full of them, but only into the receptive mind could they come. There they worked magic, were humanized themselves, while they spiritualized the human being in whose brain they lodged. And having suffered this metamorphosis, they flowed back again, as the glistening vapours flowed back to their source.
Thus man and his Creator come into touch with each other. The Creator gives the thought, the creature returns it with its own interpretation thereof. So man is made spiritual, and God human.
Such ideas as these were the outcome of Barbara's conversations with Timothy. But she did not accept his many strange statements without question. She pondered them for days, coloured them with her own imagination, absorbed them at length into her own personality. This gave her beliefs the force of experience.
Barbara went home.
Lucy had gone to bed but she was not asleep. Nevertheless, she shut her eyes, and made no movement when her sister entered their room. She knew that Barbara was bending over her, that Barbara's face was full of compassion for her sorrow. But she was too weary with weeping to long for anything save silence, and a corner where she could indulge her tears unseen.
Barbara dreamed that night of the mingled cup, which Jove gave the children of men to drink. She tasted it herself, and Lucy drank it to the dregs. Peter, laughing as was his wont, took it from Jove's hand, and she saw his eyes grow wild, his hair white, his cheeks haggard like a ghost. Then the vapours of the tarn rose around, swirling, twirling up to the light of the moon, blotting out their faces. After this dream the night was a blank until the day dawned.
"Do you know when Peter will be back?" asked Barbara, as she milked the kye in the grey of early morning.
"Nay," replied Lucy: then she added passionately, "if I had a chance of leaving the dale I'd never come back to it, never again. I'd put the memory away like a bad dream. It's an ill place. It's under a ban. Peter's silly to set foot in it when the world is free for him to walk in."
"I'm glad Peter is coming home," said Barbara.
Lucy made no reply. So far she had not given much heed to Peter's return. Now the thought sent a touch of colour to her face.
Since Joel went away life had dragged for her. Drudgery had become her lot, unlightened by any pleasant experience, or made bearable by hope. She ate her bread with tears. She was glad when each day dawned, and thankful when each day died. She longed for change, any change that would break the monotony of her existence. She was weary of living, although so young. Yet she did not desire death. All that she wanted was to fall asleep, and waken up with the thread of her old life cut, and the possibility of a new life before her. To go on and on, year after year, always following the same humdrum path was a contingency, which she could not contemplate without despair. She had striven to put Joel's image out of her mind. He had written once, but his letter was superficial, and she believed that he had ceased to care for her. Regret that the past was past drove her to spend many a night in weeping. If she could, willingly she would have forgotten him; but she was unable to forget.
Some days later as Lucy was walking through Cringel Forest she saw Peter sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree near the school-house. He did not hear her approach, and she had been watching him with gradually brightening eyes for a few moments before he felt their influence. Then he rose with a laugh; but it was not as spontaneous and merry as it used to be.
"You're welcome back, Peter," said Lucy. "The dale is very dull without you."
"Is that so?" he replied, taking her hand, and looking affectionately into her face.
"Even great-granny smiled when she heard you were back. 'Tell him to come to Greystones,' she said, 'and bring his dancing bear with him. I want waking up.'"
"Well," he answered, with a faint note of sarcasm in his voice, "it's some compensation for giving up your heart's desire to fill the role of merry-andrew with satisfaction."
"Didn't you want to come back, Peter?"
"I was just thinking when I saw you, how duty, and affection and inclination get mixed up and twisted into a knot in a man's soul."
"In a woman's too," she replied.
He looked at her. There was a pensiveness in her face that attracted him. It had lost the inconsequence of childhood, and taken on the maturity of the woman. She was less vivacious, but there was a sympathetic glow in her sweet eyes. He saw all this at a glance; she was not like Barbara, who hid her feelings under a placid brow. Lucy lived and suffered in the eyes of the world. Peter had heard rumours of an attachment between her and Joel Hart, but as Joel had neither substance, nor—to a man's eyes—much character, he had paid little heed to them in the past. Now he wondered if Joel had treated her badly. Poor Lucy! she was far too good for him.
He walked with her through the forest.
"You know I'm going to keep school?" he said.
"Aye. The children are delighted. They think you will feed them on lollipops and give them no lessons to do. They call you Peter Piper, you know."
"Peter Piper is it! Soon it will be Peppery Peter. I'll go out to-morrow morning and cut birch-rods to put in pickle."
Lucy thought that in spite of his laugh he was sad. Her own sorrow had opened up her nature so that she could understand others in a way she had never been able to do before. Peter felt her sympathy. Though she said little, the knowledge of it was conveyed to him by those unspoken words, which are uttered and heard by the heart alone. He told her about the post in India which had been such a temptation to him; about his parents' disappointment because he would not enter the Church; and how he had consented to their wishes to come home for a time, so as to give the matter a longer consideration.
"I wish I could do what they want," he said, "especially as my dear old father is failing. Don't you think he's failing, Lucy? He is so much quieter and slower than he used to be!"
"Oh, your coming will cheer him up."
"You have great faith in that side of my nature."
"It's true, Peter, you've cheered me up a lot in the last half hour."
"By telling you my troubles?"
"I'm sorry," she said kindly. "I can understand, oh, believe me, I can understand how you felt when you gave up the thought of going to India. I've learnt a lot lately; I've had to give up things myself. Life isn't all roses at Greystones, you know!"
He looked down at her.
"We've both lost some of the sparkle out of our eyes, Lucy," he said. "It's the price men and women have to pay for the possession of their own souls."