Part 3, Chapter V
T’ Owd Gen’leman
Guy went to Waynflete. The sweet, clear atmosphere, fresh from the moors, delighted him, and he felt daily stronger and better, while his inborn love for the home of his fathers withstood all painful associations. On his little rough pony, with Rawdie beside him he appeared suddenly in the fields and lanes, like “t’ owd Guy hissel,” as Jem Outhwaite’s old mother declared.
“Eh! but we’ve got a master!” one old man said, quite unimpressed by Guy’s careful quoting of his brother’s name, as he gave orders about repairs and improvements, and made himself acquainted with every dilapidation. He bearded old Cowperthwaite, the publican of the Dragon, in his den, resisted the telling plea that Cowperthwaites had kept the Dragon before Waynfletes lost the Hall, and refused him the renewal of his lease at Michaelmas on the ground of disorder and disreputableness, and of various poaching scandals, which he hunted up as diligently as if old Margaret had bought back Waynflete for the single purpose of preserving its game. It was a proceeding calculated to bring a hornet’s nest about Godfrey’s ears; but Guy was as determined as if no other spot in the valley would have served for a village club. His aims were so visionary, and his methods of carrying them out so practical, that the vicar felt as if two men were working beside him. Guy knew nothing of the parochial side of a country squire’s life; but he hunted down the old Dragon, as if turning a public-house into a coffee-tavern was his life work.
One glorious morning of spring and promise, as he was riding in and out of the lanes in the valley, his pony cast a shoe. He took him into the forge, which was close to the Dragon, to have him re-shod, and, while he waited, strolled on by the side of the dancing, laughing beck towards the old footbridge. In this blue and sunny air, when the once weird and desolate wood was beginning to swell with living green, when the birds were singing, and the earth was full of life, he felt able to look again on the scene of his trial.
He saw the rocky field down which he had stumbled in weary haste, now fresh and green, with a dozen or so of little black-faced lambs skipping about on it. The sunlight shot through and through the opposite wood, now bright and delicate with primroses and anemones; the sky was of cold, but radiant blue. Rawdie pricked his long black ears, and watched the lambs with deep interest, but with admirable self-restraint.
Guy sat down on a bit of broken wall at the foot of the field, and looked across the river. The haunted hollow was lovely with all the rough charm of the north; for Guy it had the charm of home.
“New heavens and a new earth!” he thought.
“Good day t’ ye, Mr Waynflete!”
He turned with a start, and saw a tall old woman, with a red shawl over her head and a handsome, weather-beaten face.
“Good day,” he said. “Mrs Outhwaite, isn’t it?”
“Ay, sir. Margaret Outhwaite’s my name. My old man and I were cousins – I’m as good as the last of ’em. Ye’ll ha’ heard, sir, maybe, that the Outhwaites ha’ the reet to see t’ owd Guy —him as walks– as John Outhwaite, my husband, could have told ye.”
“Ay!” said Guy. “So I’ve heard. Won’t you sit down, and tell me about it?”
“Nay, I’ll stand. But sit ye down, sir; ye look but poorly. Ay? Ye’ll maybe have had a warstle wi’ him yersell. Eh – ay? John saw him, here on t’ brig. He held to it – at his death, and said ’twas a warning. Eh dear – he never took it!”
“Did you ever see him yourself?” asked Guy.
“Nay – I never saw un; the Lord’s left un no room. Eh, sir, have ye got religion?”
“Not quite,” said Guy.
“Eh, sir, ye mun get it; ye’re the sort to need it.”
“I do,” said Guy; “that’s so.”
“Sithee,” said the old woman, resting the basket she carried on the wall, and dropping the tone of honest pride with which she had spoken of her family’s share in the Waynflete ghost, for a coaxing whisper, “sithee, Mr Waynflete. There’s my lad; he’s a bit soft is Jemmy; but he can do a job of work; he can use a besom wi’ the best, and he’ve fettled up t’ kirk for t’ oud sexton, and pu’d t’ bell and fetched t’ watter for t’ christenings, these twenty year. But this ’ere vicar he’s a stranger. Now, Mr Waynflete, canna’ ye speak a word for my lad, t’ last Outhwaite as Waynflete’ll ever see. T’ vicar, he knows nought o’ Waynflete, and ’twas from the Glory Hallelujah men I got salvation. But ’tis all the same, sithee, t’ kirk’s never opened without my Jem, and I doubt na the Lord speaks to his saul. Eh, here a be; I’ve been a looking for him. He’s feared to cross t’ brig by ’issell. There’s no telling, there’s no telling, sir, what t’ ow’d Guy may have done to him.”
Jem, still with the weird boyishness that often clings to those of imperfect intellect, came shambling down the path from the Dragon.
“T’ pony’s shod,” he said, in a high, cracked voice, as he came in sight.
“Thanks,” said Guy, moving. “Good day to you, Mrs Outhwaite; I’ll see the vicar.”
The sunny valley had lost its smile, and for the moment Guy yielded to his sudden sense of shrinking distaste, and hurried on without a backward glance. This burlesque of his most inward and individual experience gave him a new sensation. He took his pony, and rode on up the hill to the church, where the vicar was watching the placing of the new grey slabs of stone, in place of the broken ones on the high-pitched roof. Guy tied up his pony, and sitting down on a flat tombstone, looked on also.
“Peter cast a shoe,” he said; “and Mrs Outhwaite has been pleading for Jem’s place as second grave-digger.”
“Oh, of course, one must let him literally ‘fool around’ as long as he can. His mother is pretty much of a Ranter; but so is every one here with any religion. How else would they have got it? She watches over poor Jemmy. Now and then he gets drunk at the Dragon. It’ll be a good day for him when we close it. He’s a nervous, timid creature; I’ve seen him shiver and shake sometimes in a way that was pitiful.”
“The mother says t’ owd Guy scared him.”
“Oh, well,” said the vicar, “I believe that tradition would have died out long ago but for old Peggy Outhwaite. She takes a pride in it. ‘T’ owd Guy’ is used as a sort of bogie to frighten the children; I’ve heard a mother say, ‘T’ owd Guy’ll get ye.’ It’s a sort of proverb.”
Guy made no answer; but he reflected that Mr Clifton was a South-country stranger, to whom the natives did not confide their inmost beliefs, and, being himself a North-country man, and no stranger, he enjoyed this opinion in silence. He started a little when he turned and saw the subject of the conversation standing close by him, touching his cap, and smiling at him, a slow, foolish smile.
“So you’re come to look after the church?” said Guy.
“When t’ church is fettled oop, me and sexton’ll have new clothes,” he said, in a cracked but confidential whisper.
“That’ll be fine,” said Guy, good-naturedly.
Jem grinned, nodded, and shambled off again; but, from that day forward, he attached himself to Guy with curious persistency, watching for his coming, starting up unexpectedly to hold the pony, made happy by a word or smile. He followed Guy as closely, and more humbly than Rawdie.
So it came to pass that, on the morning after her arrival with her aunt at the Hall, Florella, having found her way into part of the wood that covered Flete Edge, heard a sharp bark, and beheld Rawdie come scurrying over last year’s leaves and this year’s primroses, till a shrill whistle stopped him short.
Florella stood still also, as, coming across a clearing in the underwood, she saw Guy riding his little rough pony, and behind him, like a shadow, the grotesque figure of Jem Outhwaite. They were a strange and unusual pair, with the grotesque little dog for a herald.
Guy sprang off the pony, and came forward with an eager greeting.
“We knew you were coming yesterday,” he said. “Clifton and I meant to call this afternoon. I am so glad I am still here. Oh yes,” as she murmured an inquiry and a greeting, “I am quite strong now.”
After a few more sentences, he paused and said, with a smile, and a little shyness, “I want to show you something.”
He led her a few steps aside, along a little foot-track towards a bank, covered all over with the long trails and open flowers of the smaller periwinkle.
“There!” he said. “I have been watching these every day, to see if they would be ready for you. The spring blue-bells won’t be here for a long time; but these – they are blue – they are like stars – won’t they make a picture?”
“They are just what I wanted to see,” she said. “I have hardly ever been in the country in spring.”
“Let me get you some to take home and learn them. When I look at flowers, I almost think of how you will see them, and then I know how pretty they are.”
He put the long sprays into her hand, and they looked into one another’s eyes, and felt nothing but the spring, the flowers, and each other’s presence.
At first Guy wished for no more. He did not try to draw Florella more closely into his inner life, she made the outer one so fair. It was delightful to see her cut cake and pour out tea, to hear her chat to her aunt, or play with Rawdie, and when, at Mr Clifton’s suggestion, she undertook some little kindnesses to a few old women, a little notice of some rough girls, when she put her hand to the help of Waynflete, it seemed to Guy in truth like the descent of an angel.
A sweet and natural magic drowned the dark hues of his soul in rainbow tints. From the moment when he knew himself to love her, his inward appeal to her paused. So far as he knew, he had been to her but a soul in distress, and now he had a foolish, pathetic impulse to come to her in sunshine and flowers, to please her fancy, not to move her pity. So surely, he might touch her heart, just touch it – one day he might perhaps win it outright.
And she? She never “saw” his thoughts now; how could she, when the sight of his face blotted them out? She did not even get on very fast with painting his periwinkles. One little word about his trouble would have been sweeter to her than the bluest of blue flowers; the very word he was so careful not to speak.
For his blissful content did not last very long. Surface intercourse, however sweet, could not long be sufficient for him. He could not come to her as any other wooer might have done, and, if he could, he would not. He never swerved from his conviction, that until he was free from every trace of his strange bondage, he must never seek to take her to himself. “Why, Godfrey had not been able to stand the knowledge of his secret, should he inflict it upon her?” So he was distant and reserved, and gave her pain far worse than any that his confidence could have cost her.
But he himself was full of eager hope; and hope, doubtful of fulfilment, though a very good thing in its way, is something of a foe to patience.
Part 3, Chapter VI
Hopes and Fears
But Art is impersonal. Downy palms and snown blackthorn may be offered to an artist as subjects for a sketch, just as well as if they would not also serve as tokens of love and hope. As Guy, one sunny morning, followed the path that all through Flete Dale led along by the riverside, he suffered no bud or blossom that indicated the coming of his tardy northern spring to escape him. As he gathered and combined them, it struck him that the glory of them was in the relief of their delicate tints and airy forms in the cold spring sunshine, against the pale spring sky, and that the thing would be to show them to Florella where they grew.
And, turning round a great tangle of rosy stems and shining brown buds, he saw her in the brown dress that had a sort of woodland tinting, and suited her, he thought, as well as harebell blue. She was listening to a tall, strong-limbed girl, with the handsome features and wind-blown complexion of the district, picturesquely set off by the yellow handkerchief which she wore on her head, listening with a troubled face. Her companion’s face was quite impassive, though there was a melancholy tone in her voice, as at sight of Guy, she turned off with a “Good day t’ye, sir.”
“Is that one of the girls you have been making friends with?” he said, after he had offered his spring buds to Florella, and she had taken them smiling, but still with wistful eyes.
“Yes. But I feel so ignorant and stupid with them. It is difficult quite to understand.” It was still more difficult, it was impossible to keep on the surface of things, when these two were together. But perhaps the inhabitants of Waynflete might be treated as an abstract subject, like the spring flowers. Rawdie thought that the discussion of their needs might occupy some time, and went off to investigate water-rats and other objects of interest.
“They talk to you, of course,” said Guy. “But no other stranger would get a word out of our folks.”
“They don’t talk much,” she answered. “But, one seems half to find out – and then one comes across such real troubles, and temptations. It seems so hard.”
“But, Clifton shouldn’t!” exclaimed Guy, with a sudden change. “There are very few people here fit for you to have anything to do with.”
“Oh, not that,” said Florella. “But, you see, I haven’t known much of any one but girls of my own sort. A friend of mine looks after a girl’s club in London, and some of us go to teach French and drawing there, or to sing. She thinks every one ought to spread whatever good things they may have. But it isn’t French and drawing that these girls want!”
“Do tell me just what you mean?” he said entreatingly, as they walked slowly on by the riverside.
“I mean,” she said, with a glow at thus taking counsel with him, which he little guessed, “that girls like me, tell each other their troubles, and we try to help each other, and sometimes we can. But one finds out much worse sorrows and trials than we ever have.”
“That is what you ought to have nothing to do with!” exclaimed Guy, imperatively.
“But,” she said, “you can’t help people just by being sorry for them in a general way. You have got to feel in yourself just what they feel. So one must try to understand them.”
Guy was silent. He could not keep his angel to himself. The more divine was the help she gave him, the more freely it must flow. He felt responsible for the welfare of Waynflete; he knew that he did not fight his battle for himself alone; but she had no obligations but the impulse to give herself in helpful love. She touched the flowers in her hand, and, with a sudden smile, said —
“You know, one has to ‘see.’”
“Yes,” he said, gravely. “Well! So the world was saved!”
She had given him the thought; but to herself it was new. She could not speak; while Guy felt for the moment as if the power to understand her had been cheaply bought by all the agony of his own experience.
They were brought suddenly back to earth again, to the spring flowers and the sunlight, and to the squalid cottages across the field, by wild and frantic barks from Rawdie, who rushed into view, wet and muddy, with a large rat in his mouth, while Jem Outhwaite, climbing up the bank behind him, cried out triumphantly, “He’ve got ’im, sir; he’ve got ’im hissel’!”
Rawdie went home in a state of absolute self-satisfaction. For Guy, it had been a moment for which to live; but, such are the conditions of this poor mortal life, that it was followed by a great reaction, by passionate longings to take this beloved maiden to himself, by the old disgust at all that was abnormal in his fate. He soon went back to Ingleby, where he puzzled Godfrey by fitful spirits, intermittent efforts to seem more like other people, and by hours of gloom and silence. The mental fever quieted down after a time, or perhaps he learnt to endure it.
But Florella was happier for the moment of approach. They had not ceased to understand each other. She could not paint the sun on the spring flowers, she could not satisfy herself with any tint with which she tried to match them. But, if light and hue escaped her, she could seize on their form, and she made delicate and exquisite pen-and-ink sketches of every swelling leaf and bursting bud.
She went, also, and stood on the bridge which she had seen in vision on that murky autumn evening, when her soul had followed Guy’s through its strange encounter. She looked at the laughing, living water, sparkling in the spring sunshine, and at the woods, now fresh and green. It was the fairest spot that ever was cursed by haunting memories. And yet, in the midst of all its sweetness, she felt conscious of something that she did not see, that eluded any insight that she might possess. And she did make some friends, and took into her heart some troubles, and learnt to love the weird and lovely place, because Guy loved it so much. She did not regret the London season which she was missing; she would not go and stay with the Stauntons to see the pictures; there were pictures enough in the woods, such as she had never seen before.
Once Godfrey came over on business about the estate, and came to call. He had lost his boyish manner, and had caught his brother’s gravity and reticence.
“Ah!” said Mrs Palmer, afterwards, when he had somehow extracted the fact that Constancy was working hard at college, and thinking of nothing but her examinations, “I’ve always known that boy admired Cosy. He’s too young for her, and Ingleby wouldn’t suit her at all. But clever girls often take to handsome men with nothing in them.”
“But Godfrey Waynflete has a good deal in him, Aunt Con.”
“Well, he hasn’t much to say. I expect Guy was too clever for old Mrs Waynflete, and wouldn’t give her her own way. But what Cosy will do when she comes home, I can’t think. She’ll never find enough to occupy her talents. I wish she would marry – some one who could give her a career.”
Florella did not pass over to her aunt a letter which she had just received from Constancy.
That Florella had powers of an unusual kind, except for painting, was an idea that had never formulated itself in the elder girl’s mind. Nevertheless, she was always open with her, and was never quite happy under her disapproval. She wrote —
“People ought not to have to decide on their future lives till they are thirty at least. I feel so extremely young sometimes. It’s much easier to learn moral philosophy than to find it make any difference in one’s life. I shall go in for society, and see if that has a developing effect. New sorts of people teach one more than hooks. I got heaps of ideas from Mrs Waynflete. All that business life was so new to one. I do like meeting new kinds of people. Every one here is so groovy. University life is very narrow. It is much more original and interesting, if you have brains, to spend them on doing than on learning. Mrs Waynflete was far cleverer than any literary woman. I am glad Guy is better, and that ‘Mr Godfra’,’ as old Cooper called him, is being such a good boy, and minding his business. If you can manage a private interview with Rawdie, you might give him my love. The only thing I regret in the events of last summer, is that that enchanting beast’s former master promised to get me a similar puppy. And now that chance is lost to me for ever. Well, I have no more time. If I don’t come a cropper, I believe Miss – , will offer me a lectureship here. Only in that way shall I think of coming back again. But I think a London winter would pay best. The tour with the Stauntons is the next thing, at any rate, and I mean to enjoy that to my heart’s content.” Florella mused over this letter. She thought it significant that Cosy should find time to speculate on life, when her final examination was imminent, and she understood the veiled allusion to the attentive professor, whose attentions, though she did not know it, had been so carefully brought to Godfrey’s notice by Cousin Susan. She had always thought that Cosy had liked Godfrey better than she had chosen to confess. But she had done her best to offend him, and with her sister he was stiff and shy. Besides, there was a general belief that he was engaged to Jeanie. He did not look very happy, and Guy had never dropped a hint of such an arrangement, and always managed to put Godfrey in a favourable light, in any chance mention of his name.
But Florella had heard Cuthbert Staunton call him a “young ruffian,” and she could not think him good enough for her brilliant sister. He was certainly on Constancy’s conscience; but whether he was also on her heart, was a different matter. On the whole, Florella hoped not.