I stood quite still, making no sound. He thought I had really gone this time, and began taking little strides hither and thither, and throwing his arms about. Suddenly he stopped, sweating with agitation.
“Are you there?” he said.
I did not answer. He hopped from leg to leg, pulling with one hand at the other, as if at a tight glove.
“Child!” he cried, “you’re a good child—a perfect little sweep. You shall come—do you hear?—if we ever get off this roof. We’ll escape by the woods—nobody will see us there together—and I can catch some arguses (lasiommata ægeria) that will be in season.”
V.
I AM CARRIED AWAY AS A SPECIMEN
The very rudeness of the creature nominated by Fate to be my warden gave me a feeling of confidence. Here was a shepherd’s dog ugly enough to frighten away the wolf himself, should he cross us in the shape of my master. I thrilled to have secured his promise, which, for all his boorishness, and perhaps because of it, I had faith in. The dark pit was already half bridged in my foolish young imagination, and I dreamed of alighting on the farther side—to what? Not, indeed, to the old melancholy life of the cottage near the Steine. For all my sad experience, I never entertained that prospect for one moment. I was but now in my eleventh year, yet some instinct informed me that the dead—amongst whom, surely, I must be written—should not return if they would avoid the mortification of home truths; that broken threads cannot be made one again, and leave no scar. Perhaps the spirit of vagabondage even had entered a little into my blood. In any case, it was the breezy security of my father’s, not my mother’s, protection to which I hurried in thought, with this reverent cur for escort.
As for him, accounting for his presence on the roof, he growled out to me once after this, in order to still my inquisitive importunity, while I still held the spectacles in pledge, that he had indeed taken the alarm that morning, with the rest of the family to whom he was spiritual director; but that, remembering his book left behind, he had insisted upon quitting the general flight and returning for it—with what awkward results for the steward had appeared, though, as a fact, I believe the poor man recovered later. Now, I was to understand, he had the intention, if he could make good his escape, to seek asylum, while the storm blew over, with a lady, a co-religionist and connection of his patrons, who lived distant a two days’ journey on foot. And so, having grudgingly informed me, he subsided into his unsavoury self, and would speak no more.
I did not much care, once being put in possession of the facts and the chances they afforded me. No one, it was evident, guessed at our retreat; and, for the rest, I was content to bide my time, and the opportunity I foresaw of impressing even this dull animal with a revelation of the pretty romance he had undertaken to squire.
Evening fell, and we were still sitting there. Not a footstep sounded in the house beneath us; not a voice but the birds’ came from the garden. Presently, emboldened by the quiet, I went softly climbing and investigating, finding the trap-door by way of which the chaplain had ascended, and peeping between the gables and over the roof ridges. So far as I could see, nothing human was stirring in all the placid demesne. The sundial on the lawn, the arbour in the corner, the brook embroidering the low trees, like a ribbon run through lace, were things inanimate in a painted picture. But there was something in their voiceless watchfulness that made me long to open the door, as it were, and run into the air. I was not born, like my mother, for cloisteral seclusions.
I was passing my companion once soft-footed, when he startled me by demanding, suddenly and savagely, “What’s your name?”