"We are all in prison, if you can understand me. The walls are all round, and we cannot get over them."
"'Tis best vor volk to live as 'em be meant to," said Sibley.
And again Searell was amazed. How had this woman obtained the power and the courage to answer him? And to beat him, for he was beaten. He had no words to reply to that simple philosophy, and to the woman who appealed from his decision. He had played the God with them, had brought them out of chaos, and had given them his commandments; and he was no God, but a weak man; and they were not his children.
He went back to his books, there were no flowers except Christmas-roses and snowdrops, shivering things of winter, and tried to dream. Nothing came. It seemed to him there was less mysticism in his mistland than in the dirty streets of Stonehouse; and, while he mused, that world came knocking at his mind, calling in the dialect of Sibley, "'Tis best vor volk to live as 'em be meant to." His own body, his sluggishness and unhappiness, convicted him of error; but, if he was wrong, what of all religion which tells of a God of mysticism, and of his own in particular, which, at that very season of the year, rejoiced at the birth of a Child-creator by mysticism not through Love? And at his mind was hot, red-blooded passion, a crude and awful thing, love for those things which make men horrible, love for dirt and the roots, not for bud and bloom; and a contempt and hatred for cold morality and the spells muttered by candlelight; and the message of the flowers was this: "Through the agency of others, through the eyes of those who are loved and loving, not by the confinement of self, souls find the dawn."
"Mrs. Vorse," said Searell one day, the yellow aconites were out, the first colour of the year, and he was going to look at them, "you have changed."
Sibley had her back towards him, engaged in cleaning, and she was wearing, as she always did, the enveloping apron of the country, which hung from her shoulders and surrounded her body like a sack. He could not see the flush upon her face.
"Your voice is softer. You sing at your work. You are happy."
"I hain't, master," she whispered. "I feels, master, I wants to be happy, but I be frightened."
"Of the loneliness?"
"Not that, master. I can't tell ye, but I be frightened."