CHAPTER II
WHAT MEN LIVE BY
Ishmael Ruan, like the rest of his world that day, had been planning ahead in his mind. His first conceptions were blown away from him with his breath at sight of Vassie glowing on the dingy railway platform; she was far the more self-possessed of the two, which was mortifying to a young man who, all the way down in the train, had been telling himself with what tact and kindliness he was going to behave. John-James had seemed so unaltered that his grip of the hand, as casual as though Ishmael were any acquaintance just back from a day's excursion, had been a relief. Remained his mother, for Tom, contrary to what John-James and Vassie had expected, did not look in at Penzance Station to greet Ishmael on his transit, and as to the Parson, he was letting Ishmael alone to find his feet with his family, holding himself as a person to be come to if occasion or affection prompted it later.
The drive was a silent one, as even Vassie felt shy, though she hid it under an affectation of calmness. Ishmael had plenty of time to readjust himself and think of his mother, the determining factor, now Archelaus was away, in his happiness—or so he thought, ignorant in his masculinity of the force and will sheathed in Vassie's velvet sleekness. His mother … he had no sentiment at the name; but then neither would he have had if the relation between them had been a happy one. He would then have felt love, but he would always have been of too deadly a clarity for sentiment. He was sorry for his mother with a degree of sympathy rare in one so young, for he had as little of the hardness of youth as might be, and what he had was not of judgment, but feeling. He was at the moment nothing but sorry for his mother, but though that pity would not change to condemnation it might turn to dislike. He too, as Annie was doing in the parlour as she awaited the sound of the wheels that were bearing him nearer her, tried to clutch at memories. He could find a few of fierce kindnesses, but not one of an embrace unqualified by some queer feeling other than simple love, which he had always felt in her. She did not, of course, care twopence for him, he decided. Well, he would not be a hypocrite—he would not bother or embarrass her with the expression of a tenderness neither of them felt; he would be gentle, he would kiss her if she seemed to expect it, but he would talk brightly and naturally of trivial things, he would make the occasion seem as little weighted with portent as possible. There should be nothing of the return of the master, nothing of the odious briskness of the new broom about him at his entry. Time enough after to talk over things…. He could spend the next day with John-James on the farm discussing improvements, alterations. They were very behind the times down here; he had seen farming in Somerset and Devon in his holidays that would make them open their eyes down here. That would all break it to his mother gently. She was getting old too—she must be quite fifty—and old people did not like to have reforms thrust upon them. No, there should be nothing eager, aggressive about him. He remembered stormy, excitable scenes of his childhood and resolved they should see what the self-control of a gentleman was like. Thus Ishmael, with intentions not by any means, not even most largely, selfish. Yet, of all moods, the worst to meet his mother's.
The growing interest of the drive as they neared the north-west and the familiar landmarks of his childhood came into sight, flooded with the June sunshine—the ruined mine-shafts staring up so starkly, the glory of white cattle in the golden light, the first glimpse of the pale roofs of Cloom itself, prismatic as a wood-pigeon's plumage, all these things struck at his heart with a keener shock than did anything personal, and made thought of his mother sink away from him. Behind the cluster of grey buildings he saw the parti-coloured fields stretching away—green pasture, brown arable, pale emerald of the young corn—all his. He saw in folds of the land little copses of ash whose trunks showed pale as ghost-trees; he saw, gleaming here and there through the gorse-bushes, the stream that ran along the bottom of the slope below the cart-track that led to Cloom. He saw the bleak, grey homesteads, cottages and small farms, set here and there, as he turned in his seat to look around him. And his heart leapt to the knowledge that all these things were his….
Annie's croaking cry, her thin arms, her quick straining of him, he all unprepared even for the mere physical yielding that alone saves such an embrace from awkwardness, found him lost. Annie felt it and stiffened, and the moment had gone never to come back. In after years, when Annie had magnified it to herself and him, accusing him of throwing her love back in her face when she had offered it, he was wont to reproach himself bitterly. But Annie was so volatile in emotion, except where Archelaus was concerned, that her new flow would, in all likelihood, not have held its course for more than a few weeks at the best. Ishmael knew this, but Annie, by dint of telling herself the contrary, never did. The awkwardness of the actual moment was saved by Phoebe, who had hung in the background waiting for what she thought might be the most telling moment to glide forward, but who, her natural pleasure at sight of her old playmate suddenly overbearing more studied considerations, could contain herself in silence and the shadows no longer.
"Ishmael!" she cried, running forward. "Ishmael!"
She held out her two hands and Vassie thought swiftly: "It's no good, my dear; he's for your betters—he and I …" and with a worldliness that went far towards bearing out her claims to ladyhood she broke in with:
"You remember little Phoebe, Ishmael—from the mill…."
"Why, of course. You haven't grown much, though you've got your hair done up," said Ishmael, thankful for any diversion from Annie's reproachful arms, which had slid from his neck to hang by her side.
"I'm quite grown-up, though," said Phoebe, dimpling.
"She mean's she's too old for you to kiss, lad," said simple John-James with directness, grinning as he took the mare's bridle to lead her to the stable. Ishmael had not yet the social cleverness to kiss Phoebe at once and without embarrassment or to laugh the suggestion away, but she, who had no social sense at all and never attained any, met the moment perfectly, with a little curtsey and a sidelong look of merriment. "Ah, I remember when Ishmael refused to kiss me, and I cried myself to sleep over it," she said; "'tisn't likely I'm going to let him kiss me now."
"No—did I …?" asked he; and Vassie gave a shrill laugh.
"To be sure he did and would again," she declared; "he's not thinking of such things. Mamma, is tea ready in the parlour?"
"I fear I forgot about it, Vassie, my dear, but Katie shall get it to wance. Come in here, Ishmael. We do sit here now; simminly we're quality, according to she."
Ishmael followed his mother into the ugly room, which offended his eyes, used as they were to the Parson's taste. An album lay on the floor, and he stooped to pick it up, but his mother, quick for all her years and rheumatism, was before him and had thrust it out of his reach.
Tea was a stiff meal; everyone was on company manners. John-James, in from stabling the mare, sat at the edge of a chair; Vassie was too genteel, Phoebe too arch, Annie grim. Ishmael's heart sank with a terrible weight upon it as he thought that these were the people with whom his lot was cast—that he must see them, talk to them, day in, day out, all the round of the seasons…. Vassie's beauty seemed dimmed to him; Phoebe became an annoyance like a musical-box that will not leave off tinkling out the same tune. He bent his head lower as he sat, aware, with a misery of shame, that tears were burning perilously near his eye-lids. Life was sordid, and his position, over which he had not been guiltless of sometimes dreaming as romantic, held nothing but mortification and hatefulness.
The meal dragged on; the daylight without grew glamorous. Conversation flickered and died, and at last Ishmael, pushing his chair back with a noise that sounded horrible to himself, announced his intention of going to the Vicarage. Annie muttered something about people who could not be content to stay at home even on their first evening….
But he was not allowed to escape alone; Phoebe discovered that it was time she was going back to the mill, and there was no evading an offer to accompany her.
Somehow, away from the others, and out in the open, Phoebe seemed to shed the commonness that had blighted her at that dreadful tea. She still coquetted, but it was with a fresh and dewy coquetry as of some innocent woodland creature that displays its charms as naturally as it breathes. Ishmael found himself pleased instead of irritated when he received her weight as he helped her over the stone steps at each stile—for the only girl he had seen much of in late years had been wont to stretch out a strong hand to guide him.
As they went over the marsh where they had so often played as children they vied with each other in pointing out memorable spots, and the gaiety of the old days mingled with the beauty of the present evening to brighten his spirits. The marsh was all pied with white—pearly white of blowing cotton-grass; thick, deader white of water-cress in full flower; faint blurred white of thousands of the heath-bedstraw's tiny blossoms. Phoebe in her white gown sprang onto swaying tussocks and picked plumes of cotton-grass to trim herself a garden hat, and Ishmael steadied her passage.
"Oh, Ishmael, I'm so glad you've come back!" she told him, lifting a glowing face, haloed by the rose-lined hat that had slipped to her shoulders and was only held in place by a pink velvet ribbon which was not softer than the throat it barred.
"It's often dull here," she ran on. "There's not many people I care about going with since I came back from boarding school, and even for those I do go with Vassie spoils it by saying I'm demeaning myself. She's such a fine lady."
"And aren't you?" asked Ishmael, laughing; "that was my first thought when I saw you, anyway."
"Was it?" She dimpled with pleasure, but added shrewdly: "I'm not one, though. I like getting away from it all and working in the dairy and looking after the tiny calves. I like that best of all, that and my baby chickens. But Vassie's only happy when she's dressed up and paying visits."
"I like your way best," he assured her, thinking what a jolly little thing she was after all. But Phoebe's mind could not keep its attention on any one theme for more than a minute, and her eyes and thoughts were wandering. Suddenly she gave a little cry.
"Oh, look at those beauties! I must have them!" And she pointed to where, on a vividly green patch of marsh, a whole grove of cotton-grass stood up in the glow of the setting sun. The golden light poured through the silky tufts, making of each a flake of fire, all raining at the same slight slope from hair-fine stems. Against the turf they looked for all the world like Chinese lanterns swung for some miniature revel of the fairies—they seemed literally to diffuse light upon the air. Ishmael stood staring, stung to excitement by that suddenly-glimpsed beauty; but Phoebe darted forward, and the next moment had withdrawn a foot whose stout country shoe and white stocking were dripping greenly.
"Here, let me!" cried Ishmael; but she waved him back.
"No, you're too heavy; you'd go through at once. Hold my hand while I lean over;" and she swung outwards from his grasp, her other hand stretching vainly.
"Best leave that lot," advised Ishmael; "there's some much easier to get at just along there."
She turned her head, body still swung forward, and followed the line of his pointing finger to where a cluster of grass as fine, but untransmuted, stood in shadow.
"Oh, but that hasn't the sun on it!" she exclaimed naïvely. The next moment she had seen the absurdity of her own speech, and, pivoting to the path beside him, joined in his laughter.
"Well, it seemed sense to me when I said it," she protested.
"So it would have been if you could have picked the sun too."
"But I suppose it was only the sun that made me want them at all.
Aren't I a goose? Vassie would say I shall never get sense."
"I like that sort of nonsense; it's rather jolly, somehow. I say,
Phoebe, I shall think of you as the girl who wanted to pick the sun.
Doesn't it sound ripping?"
"Oh, my feet are so wet!" cried Phoebe. "I must hurry home. Mother will fuss so over me, you can't think."
"Shall I just get you that sunny grass before we go?"
Phoebe hesitated, and then some instinct, finer than her comprehension of it, prompted her to a refusal, and the cotton-grass was left to swing its gossamer globes of light till the sun should have dipped below the rim of the moor.
When Ishmael had delivered Phoebe up to the tender agitations of the fussy, weakly mother, and himself got away from the too-enthusiastic welcome of the father, he struck towards the cliffs and the Vicarage with a younger heart than had been his all the evening. Quite naturally life had slipped through from a film of darkness on to a brighter plane, and he greeted Boase with none of the gruffness that would have weighed on him earlier. This also had the result of breaking the reticence which would otherwise have kept him from telling anything of his real feelings. Now that his family and the life before him no longer seemed rayless, he could speak of the blight that had, for him, settled even over the future as he sat in that fearsome parlour.
Boase listened, glad that the boy seemed to be growing more articulate; it would make his help, when it was needed, easier to give. He kept Ishmael for supper, feeling that consideration for Annie was not the most important thing just then, and after it he walked with the boy as far as the stile that gave on to the cliff path. Ishmael was far from having given way to one of his old unbalanced fits of chattering, but it had been a pleasure to him to talk freely to the person with whom he was most intimate. It was long—unnaturally long for expansive youth—since he had talked so freely, for Killigrew had left St. Renny a year before him to study painting in Paris. It was the time when the great Barbizon school was in its prime, when Diaz and Rousseau and Harpignies and the rest of that goodly company were heading the return to Nature which the epoch needed, just as later it was to need, with equal sincerity, a return to the primitive in art. Killigrew was absorbed by the fervour of his new creed and wrote but rarely, and his letters were all but incomprehensible to Ishmael. Not in his moments of freest intercourse with Phoebe that evening had it been possible to exchange anything beyond the chatter and playfulness of children, but there was that in Ishmael to-night which, he being young, had to find outlet. For youth is the period of giving, as gathering age is of withholding.
Coming home after so long, coming home, moreover, with a meaning portentous beyond the ordinary attached to the act, had excited Ishmael unknown to himself. Physically he felt very tired, which he told himself was absurd, but mentally he was of a joyous alertness. Leaning upon the stile, he drew a deep breath of the salt air and raised his eyes to the night sky curving, so high was he placed, for an immense arc about his tiny form. To the north the Plough trailed its length, but south, high over the dark blot which to the keen sight of love meant Cloom, Spica, brilliant crown of Virgo, pulsed whitely, while the glittering sisterhood of Aquila and Lyra, Corona and Libra swept towards the east, ushering up the sky the slim young moon, as bright as they but more serene, like a young mother amidst a flock of heedless girls. How often had Ishmael counted these same clear callous eyes from sleeping St. Renny, but never with the answering gleam in his breast that he felt now he saw them over his own land.
"So life is going to be good, after all," remarked the Parson abruptly.
"Rather. It seems jolly good to-night, anyway. All my life I've been looking forward to this, just this, coming back here and making something of it all … and the funny thing is now it's come I'm not disappointed."
"Why should you be?"
"I dunno. Only one expects to be when one's been expecting to be happy.
That sounds Irish, but you know what I mean."
"Yes, I know, but then I'm older than you. Why should you have found that out?"
"Some things—things like that—one doesn't find out by what happens. One sort of knows them to start with. It's funny too, because what I'm so cock-a-hoop about to-night is that life's so full of things just ahead, things that are going to happen. I say, look at that moon; I sort of feel as though I could jump over her if only I tried hard enough!"
"That's what youth lives on," said Boase—"not on what happens, but on what may happen. Every morning when you wake don't you feel—'To-day It may happen,' though you haven't the vaguest idea what It may be?"
"Why, yes, I think that's true," said Ishmael slowly.
"Yes, it's true. It's what youth and hope and courage lives by."
"And old people—what do they live by?"
"Ah, that everyone has to find out for himself. It depends largely on what his middle-age has drawn on, and that's nearly always something more material than what fed his youth. There's only one thing certain—that we all have something, some secret bread of our own soul, by which we live, that nourishes and sustains us. It may be a different thing for each man alive."
"We must each work out our own damnation," said Ishmael, and then could have kicked himself for his own smartness that he heard go jarring through the night. He waited in a blush of panic for some reproof, such as "That was hardly worthy, was it?" But the Parson, ever nothing if not unexpected, did not administer it, though Ishmael could have sworn he felt his smile through the darkness.
"Damnation, salvation, it's much the same thing," said Boase, cheerfully, "though naturally youth likes to use the former word. But the great thing is never to despise the means by which another man attains it. Patience, tolerance, tolerance, patience…."
"Oh, I don't know," protested Ishmael. "I don't think much would get done in the world at that rate, would it?"
"Perhaps not. And you have so much to do in it…. When d'you start?"
"To-morrow morning with dawn, so I must be getting off. If you're awake round about then, Da Boase, think of me beginning to remake the world over at Cloom."
And Ishmael set off through the night, his feet lagging with a blissful fatigue and his mind falling on an equally blissful numbness. As he went the Parson's phrase went with him, stirring his imagination, and when he climbed into the big bed beneath the drooping Christ it worked more articulately within him. "Secret bread …" he thought; "that's what he called it…. I wonder if Phoebe's is sun—she wanted to pick the sun. And his is religion, of course, and mine—I know what mine is. It'll always be the same. I shan't change even if I grow old."
He began to feel very drowsy and drifted into a vague wonder at the thought of growing old. "I wonder what it feels like. I suppose one takes no more interest in anything; it can't matter what one's secret bread is. But mine, of course, mine is Cloom…." And on that he fell asleep.