The School-Treat + 

Gerda had refused point-blank to invite Darnley and Christie to supper on Monday night, thus bringing to nothing Christie’s premonition in the stubble-field. And now it was the middle of the long, sunlit afternoon⁠—relaxed, autumnal, mellow⁠—of Mr. Valley’s great gala-day. + 

The fête was held in the vicarage-glebe, adjoining that portion of the churchyard-wall behind which rose the now four-months-old tombstone of the youthful Mr. Redfern. + 

The young men and boys of the village, encouraged at their game by Mr. Urquhart and Darnley Otter, were engaged in an interminable cricket-match, a match played between those who lived west of the church and those who lived east. + 

When Wolf first left his employer’s library, which he did some half-hour later than the squire himself, and entered the school-treat field, he felt nervous and irritable. Everyone he knew in the world seemed to be gathered in that enclosure; and as he stealthily shuffled along the edge of the churchyard, he felt as if he would like to hide himself from them all, down in the silent earth along with young Redfern! + 

He found himself at a spot where the wall was very low, and, turning his back upon the crowded scene, leaned there for a while unnoticed, gazing at the great perpendicular tower. With the shouts and laughter in his ears, that tower looked incredibly massive and silent. What ebbing and flowing of human lives had it not seen, since unknown hands in the reign of the first Tudor piled it up there, stone upon stone! + 

Well, at least it was something to face the disquietudes of his own life in the presence of masonry like this, so subdued, so encrusted, rendered so mellow by the passing of the generations! As long as Fate allowed him to eke out his days amid old time-weathered concretions, like this King’s Barton Tower, he could never touch certain abysses of misery! Here in these West Country places he was at any rate spared the atrocity of feeling the pinch of life’s dilemmas against a background of monstrous modern inventions. The long, cold clutch of scientific discovery, laid, like metallic fingers, upon the human pulse, could not despoil the dignity of existence here; though the invasion by such inhuman forces had already begun! + 

“Long may this tower stand, so that men like me can touch its stones, its buttresses, its lichen, its moss, and escape from the dragon’s-tail of the stinging present!” + 

He was conscious of a stealthy step behind him, and, turning round, he found Jason Otter at his side. + 

“You are enjoying yourself looking at his grave,” the poet began; “and I don’t blame you. I like looking at the graves of people I’ve known. But you go further than I could go, Solent. You are the clever one, the wise one, the old cunning one! You can enjoy looking at a grave though you never knew the person who’s in it.” + 

“You can’t expect me not to be interested in Redfern, can you?” retorted Wolf, a little crustily. + 

“Of course not. That’s just it. We all feel an interest⁠—a nice, merry interest⁠—in being alive when someone else is dead. He only came down here for money,” he added unexpectedly, “like you!” + 

“If I came for it, I assure you I don’t get it,” said Wolf. + 

Jason chuckled a great deal at this remark. Then he grew grave. “I’ve got a poem here I’d like to read to you, if it wouldn’t spoil your pleasure in looking at this young man’s grave. I won’t, if it would.” + 

“I’ve looked all I want to look,” said Wolf; “so do read me what you’ve got there. I’m glad of any excuse not to go round the field and hear so much talk.” + 

“Sit down, then, a minute⁠ ⁠… do you mind?” + 

The two men sat down at the base of the wall and leaned their backs against it, facing the school-treat meadow. Jason produced from his pocket a small notebook, which he opened very deliberately upon his knee. + 

“It’s about white seaweed,” said Jason Otter. + 

“I didn’t know it was ever white,” said Wolf. + 

“Everything is white at one time or another,” retorted Jason. “You’ll be white enough yourself, one fine day!” + 

“If it only gets white when it’s dead,” argued Wolf obstinately, “I don’t think it’s much of a subject. I like the idea of seaweed being white in the way chalk is white or daisies are white; but if it just fades and bleaches⁠ ⁠… I don’t think much of that.” + 

“It’s no good abusing me before you’ve heard it,” said Jason; “but, of course, we know this business of reading our writings is what your friend Darnley would call impolite.” + 

“Go on, man, go on!” cried Wolf. “I’m listening.” + 

And the poet began to read. + 

“White Seaweed”⁠ ⁠… + 

He repeated these words a second time, gathering his energy. + 

“White Seaweed.” + 

“For God’s sake,” cried Wolf, “get on with it! They’ll catch sight of us in a moment and then it’ll all be spoilt.” + 

Jason accepted this impatience with unruffled equanimity, and began in a low voice; but, gathering confidence as he proceeded, he read the poem from beginning to end without a pause. + 

White as the foam in the track of a whale + 

As he spouts and sports for a thousand miles + 

Where the waters slope round the planet’s rim, + 

Beyond the continents and the isles, + 

White as the foam that follows him + 

Where there’s never a masthead nor a sail. + 

Drowned and dead from their sunken ships, + 

Drift the bodies of boys and girls; + 

White are they as they float and drift, + 

Their hair like flotsam, their breasts like pearls, + 

While the grey tides lift them, or cease to lift, + 

And the green tides gurgle between their lips. + 

Fishes’ eyes in the cold grey deep, + 

Staring and waiting, waiting and staring, + 

Seagulls’ beaks on the tops of the wave, + 

The same eternal quest are sharing; + 

But the dark, wet, purple, slippery grave + 

Holds safe those bodies in untouched sleep. + 

And out of the flesh of those bodies light, + 

In their dark, wet, purple, slippery bed, + 

A seaweed grows that is soft as silk, + 

White as the moon on St. Alban’s Head, + 

Moss-like, fern-like, white as milk.⁠— + 

The fingers of Mary are not more white! + 

Oh! White as the horn of God’s unicorn, + 

That seaweed lies upon Redcliff bay, + 

Lies in the spindrift on Redcliff sands, + 

Fling all your wicked thoughts away! + 

Take off your shoes; anoint your hands! + 

Than to touch such seaweed with careless scorn + 

’Twere better never to have been born! + 

Jason’s voice sank; and that peculiar silence ensued which is fuller of electric crosscurrents than anything else in the world⁠ ⁠… the silence produced by the falling of the seminal drops of verbal creation⁠ ⁠… upon an alien mind. + 

“I like it very much,” murmured Wolf at last. And he thought to himself, “The beggar has his own peculiar imagination.” + 

Then he said aloud: “It’s one of your best poems, Jason. I don’t think it’s quite up to the ‘Slowworm of Lenty,’ but it does you credit and I congratulate you. What did you exactly mean by that last verse? Did you mean that there are people in the world whose wicked thoughts are aroused by white seaweed, or did you just mean the ordinary stupidity of human beings?” + 

“It’s not my business to explain what I mean,” said Jason. “It’s my business to write. I can see what you think. You think that I just string words together as they come into my head! It isn’t as easy to write a poem as you seem to imagine.” + 

“Why do you write so often about water and about drowned people?” asked Wolf. “Your pond-elf in ‘The Slowworm’ gave me a weird feeling; and this seaweed of yours, growing out of drowned bodies⁠—” + 

“You needn’t go on!” interrupted Jason. “Of course, I can’t expect anyone to like my poetry who lives by copying out the liquorish thoughts of a doting old fool. We all want to be glorified. My poetry is all I’ve got and I ought never to have read it to you. I ought to have known I’d only get abuse. It’s this wanting to be glorified that’s the mistake. A person ought to be satisfied if he can get his meals three times a day, without having to dance attendance on some silly old man or some ugly old woman!” + 

Wolf swept this aside. “Do you have in your mind any definite people when you make the newts and tadpoles tease the pond-elf, and when you make these fish and gulls want to eat these youthful bodies?” + 

Jason’s face wrinkled with delight at this. + 

“You’re afraid I might bring you in!” he chuckled. “I wouldn’t mind not being glorified if I could make your friend Urquhart agitate himself as much as you do over my poems.” + 

Wolf had no time to reply to this; for, to his considerable surprise, he perceived his mother and Gerda, arm in arm, advancing towards their retreat. + 

Both he and Jason struggled simultaneously to their feet and moved towards the two women. Mrs. Solent began speaking with her accustomed high-pitched ironical intonation. + 

“Don’t take it off, Mr. Otter,” she said, when the poet raised his hand to his hat. “I know how you hate the sun; and it is hot today; though the hotter it is the more I enjoy it, though I think our pretty Gerda here agrees with you.” + 

Jason, who had succeeded with a certain embarrassment in lifting his straw-hat a few inches from his head in a stiff, perpendicular direction, pulled it down once more over his forehead with grateful relief. + 

“What’s this?” said Wolf, trying to conceal his discomfort under an airy jauntiness. “What’s this between you two?” + 

“Your mother and I have had several walks together,” said Jason, “and she knows my ways.” + 

“So well as to take a great liberty!” exclaimed the handsome lady, whose brown eyes were shining with radiant exultation. And as she spoke she stepped to Jason’s side and poked something, with her light-gloved fingers, into its place under his hat. + 

While this was proceeding, the expression upon the poet’s face made Wolf astonished. It was the queerest mixture of physical repulsion with pleasurable, masochistic submission. He was amazed at his mother’s audacity. + 

“What is it that you wear under your hat, Mr. Otter?” asked Gerda innocently. + 

The strange man looked at her with a very peculiar expression⁠—an expression that baffled Wolf altogether. Then a most beautiful look came into his grey eyes, a look infinitely wistful and sorrowful, the sort of look that a disguised and persecuted god, lost among some savage race that knew him not nor could have comprehended him if it had known him, might have worn; and he replied gently: “I feel the sun, young lady. I find cabbage-leaves a great help. But today”⁠—and here he smiled a disarming smile⁠—“today it’s a rhubarb-leaf.” + 

Having said this, and with a courtly bend of his body that would have done credit to a royal personage, Jason Otter moved off, making his way, with careful manoeuvring to avoid any encounter with the crowd, towards that part of the field where the old men of the village, seated on wooden benches, were partaking of cakes and cider. + 

“I hope you haven’t offended him, Mother,” muttered Wolf. + 

“I don’t think so,” cried Gerda. “What a nice man he is, Wolf! I like him ever so much better than Darnley.” + 

“That’s because Darnley’s my best friend,” said Wolf. “It’s a law of nature, sweetheart, isn’t it, Mother?” + 

But Mrs. Solent completely disregarded this little passage between them. + 

“What Gerda and I came for,” she said, “was to ask you to show us Mr. Redfern’s grave. Gerda’s never seen it, though her father made the headstone, and I’ve never seen it, though I’ve asked Mr. Urquhart a hundred times to show it to me.” + 

“It’s not hard to find,” said Wolf drily. “You could have gone any day by yourself.” + 

“What’s the sport in that?” laughed the lady, still displaying the same undercurrent of secret excitement. “The fun of looking at graves is all in the person you look at them with⁠ ⁠… isn’t it, Gerda? I’m sure you must have enjoyed yourself watching all the fuss people make!” + 

“I can’t help my father being a monument-maker,” said Gerda gravely. “It’s a trade, like any other trade.” + 

“I’m not quarrelling with your father’s profession, child,” Mrs. Solent rapped out. “I’m only saying that there’s no sport in looking at graves by oneself; and I do want to see this one.” + 

“There it is, then, Mother!” cried Wolf, almost peevishly. “Can’t you see?⁠ ⁠… the tall stone one there⁠ ⁠… no! over there⁠ ⁠… nearer the Tower,” and he pointed with his stick. + 

“I want to go up to it,” said Mrs. Solent obstinately, “and so does Gerda. She told me so just now. We’re both sick to death of swinging long-legged girls. I don’t want to see any more frills or garters for the rest of my life.” + 

“Well, come on, then,” said Wolf petulantly. “You can climb over this, can’t you, Mother? I suppose Bob Weevil’s making himself useful at the swings, eh?” + 

Whatever demon it was that made him indulge in this jocularity, its result was immediate. + 

Gerda turned on him fiercely. “Don’t be so vulgar, Wolf. Bob’s playing cricket, and so’s Lobbie. You ought to know better than to make remarks like that!” + 

“Don’t push me, Wolf.” It was his mother speaking, as she began scrambling over the low moss-grown wall. “Give me your hand;⁠ ⁠… no! give me your hand.” + 

Soon they were all three standing by Redfern’s grave. + 

“Poor boy!” sighed Mrs. Solent. “Do you know, Wolf, I heard Roger Monk talking in a queer way last week. I was asking him about this boy’s death, and he spoke in such a funny tone about it. He almost implied that it was a case of suicide. Have you heard anything of that sort?” + 

“Oh, just rumours, Mother,” replied Wolf casually; “just rumours and village-gossip. I’ve never heard of an inquest, or anything like that. I believe he died in his bed.” + 

“Father talks queer about it too,” said Gerda. “But do look at that! Is that a mole or a rabbit?” + 

“I don’t know,” said Wolf vaguely. It did not interest him in any particular way that this newly-grown-over mound should have been burrowed into or scraped at. After his many years of London life, the ways of moles, rabbits, dogs, foxes, were all equally arbitrary, equally unpredictable. It was, however, brought home to him now that there was something exceptional in this phenomenon; for Gerda, oblivious of the risk of grass-stains upon her summer frock, went down hurriedly on her knees and began fumbling with her bare fingers in the disordered clay, scooping up little handsfuls of dry brown earth with one hand and filtering them thoughtfully into the hollow palm of the other hand. + 

“Are you looking for Mr. Redfern’s bones?” enquired Mrs. Solent in her most airy manner. “You look like that pretty girl in the poem, leaning over her Pot of Basil; doesn’t she, Wolf?” And touching the mound with the tip of her green parasol she put her head a little to one side and began quoting from the poem in question in a mock-sentimental intonation⁠ ⁠… + 

“And she forgot the stars, the moon, the sun; + 

And she forgot the blue above the trees; + 

And she forgot the dells where waters run; + 

And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze. + 

She had no knowledge⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Don’t, Mother,” interrupted Wolf crossly, “Gerda knows what she’s doing.” + 

The unequalled lines roused their response in him, as independently of the mocking tone in which they were spoken as beautiful limbs under a ridiculous disguise; but this response only annoyed him the more. + 

“What is it, sweetheart?” he cried. “Is it a rabbit? I didn’t know rabbits ever burrowed in churchyards.” + 

“It’s a mole,” said Mrs. Solent. + 

It was Wolf’s turn to mutter something now⁠ ⁠… + 

“Well said, old mole! canst work i’ the earth so fast? + 

A worthy pioneer! Once more remove, good friends.” + 

“What’s that? You know perfectly well it’s a mole, Gerda,” said Mrs. Solent. Gerda remained silent. She lifted some of the loose earth to her face and smelt it. Then she leapt to her feet, shook out her skirt, and rubbed the palms of her hands together. “I give it up,” she said. “It isn’t a rabbit. There’s no smell of a fox either. It may have been a dog.” + 

“A mole⁠ ⁠… a mole!” repeated the older woman. + 

“A mole!” muttered Gerda, with the profound sarcasm of the country-bred; and Wolf caught a little red flush on her cheeks like a crimson shadow on a mother-of-pearl shell. “Well! we can’t do anything, anyway,” she said. “It’s silly to fuss ourselves. Bother! I’ve got some grit in my shoe!” + 

“It spoils the look of the grave completely, this great mole-hole,” said Mrs. Solent. Then her face lit up, and she opened her parasol with an eager click. “This is a bit of sport,” she cried. “Let’s fill the thing up! Never mind about the school-treat. Where does Valley keep his spade? We only want a spade and a roll of turf. I saw some loose turf lying about in our garden. Come on, Wolf! Let’s go over and get it, and ask Valley where he keeps his shovel.” + 

Her face was full of animation now, and her eyes shone. Her grey hair and black Gainsborough hat framed the vivid cheeks of youth. The way she tilted her parasol as she spoke had something adventurous, almost hoydenish. + 

“Come, Wolf, let’s get that turf,” said Mrs. Solent. “We must ask Valley where he keeps his spade.” + 

As Wolf turned to follow his mother on this impetuous quest, he caught sight of Gerda, struggling with the strap of her shoe, as she propped herself with one hand upon Redfern’s headstone. There was such a look of defiant anger on her face that he halted irresolutely. + 

“Oh, go, if you want to, Wolf!” she cried. “I’m sure I don’t want to keep you. It isn’t often, though, that I get a chance of enjoying myself, working like I do in that dark kitchen all the time!” + 

Mrs. Solent gave her a steady, surprised stare. + 

“I won’t keep him long, if you want him for your game,” she said. “I can fill this hole up by myself, if you just get me the spade and the turf, Wolf.” + 

The flush in Gerda’s cheeks grew deeper. “I think it’s a shame! Why did you bring me here at all, Wolf, if we weren’t going to do something nice? I don’t want to spend this afternoon doing what I do every day in the week.” + 

Mrs. Solent gave Wolf a quick, surprised look, full of airy pity⁠—a look that said, “You poor boy, how awful for you to be at the beck and call of such a child!” But aloud she remarked: + 

“It’s all right, Gerda. We won’t spoil your sport. Run along to your friends. I won’t keep him long.” + 

But Gerda’s suppressed anger had mounted so high by this time that there could be no such easy dénouement. + 

She held up her rounded chin and tossed back her head. Then, clasping her hands behind her, with her heels close together at the edge of the grave, she regarded Mrs. Solent with flashing eyes. + 

“Of course Wolf’s on your side. Of course he’ll love to fool about with your spades and turf, when it’s my one real treat of the whole summer! You two are both the same. You only think of yourselves and what you want. If it’s the silliest thing, like this nonsense about a mole, and every sensible person knows what a molehill is, it must come first, before everything, just because you’ve thought of it! Oh, yes, I saw you smiling at him just now, when my shoe came off. You couldn’t have looked much different if my stockings had been full of holes! Everyone can’t buy high-class London things; but I tell you our Blacksod shops be as good as they be any day in the week!” + 

“Well, Wolf,” said Mrs. Solent calmly, holding her parasol at a correct garden-party angle and letting her high spirits drop away, “the best thing you can do is to take your pretty young wife back to her friends’ games.” + 

“My friends’ games!” retorted the indignant girl. “I’m as old as anyone, considering all I put up with!” + 

“My dear child,” said the elder lady gently. “There’s really no reason for this excitement. Do try and calm yourself, and let’s all go back quietly. I’m sure I’m quite ready to give up my idea if it spoils your pleasure. Don’t, for mercy’s sake, make such a mountain out of this molehill. I only thought of filling up this hole as a bit of sport, and because school-treats are so boring.” + 

Her words were soothing; but there was something in the tilt of her eyebrows, as she glanced at Wolf, which made him realize that she was less unruffled than she appeared. He knew of old that the one thing in the world she hated was any display of temper or anything resembling a “scene.” His own mind at this moment was unable to resist its furtive commentary upon the way Chance had managed to stage this encounter between the two. He had noticed these tricks before. It was as if there were some special aesthetic laws which Chance delighted to obey; and it always gave him a peculiar satisfaction to contemplate this bizarre rhythm. At such moments he found himself sacrificing action, emotion, sympathy, every human attribute, in a sort of ecstatic pondering over what this artistry of Chance was accomplishing. He felt as if he were in the presence of the unrolling of a psychic map. The figures on this map⁠—his mother with her green parasol, Gerda with her grass-stained dress⁠—were a sort of eddying vortex of significance upon a stream that was always rippling itself into mystic diagrams! Chance, in fact, was forever at work fulfilling its own secret aesthetic laws; but every now and then, as at this fatal moment, its creation became especially vivid, and the whole “psychic map” upon that flowing stream grew violently and intensely agitated. The circle of ripples he was now contemplating with this inhuman detachment had two circumferences, namely, the angry consciousness of Gerda and the supercilious consciousness of his mother; but below them both⁠—down there on the quiet river-floor⁠—was the discolored, decomposed, unrecognizable face of the young Redfern. + 

“You’ve never liked my marrying him!” It was Gerda’s voice he heard now, as he awoke from his metaphysical trance to realize that part of his mother’s last remarks had fallen upon nothing but the surface of his mind. + 

“I’ve always been an outsider to both of you,” the angry girl went on. “You’ve always despised me and my family, and done your best to make him despise us.” + 

“I have the greatest respect for your family, my good child. No one who knows your father can possibly help it. Come now! It really won’t do for us to make Wolf embarrassed like this. I’ve the utmost respect for your people, Gerda, and I’m sure my son couldn’t have married a lovelier creature than you are, even at this moment! But do come, now, both of you, and let’s get back to the field. Mr. Urquhart will be quite lost among those boys without Wolf’s help.” + 

She laid her hand with a soothing gesture upon the girl’s wrist; but the glance she gave Wolf was full of a mocking resignation that threw a screen round them and railed off this ill-advised proletarian. Gerda’s behaviour on the other side of this barrier became so irrational that it could only excite well-bred surprise! But the girl tossed her hand away. + 

“Mr. Urquhart, indeed!” she cried. “A nice sort you are out here, you King’s Barton gentry! Why, I’ve never cared even to tell Wolf all I’ve heard Dad say about what some folks do in this dirty village.” Her voice grew louder, as her long-suppressed feelings burst forth. Wolf had fancied in his simplicity that his mother’s airy propitiations had disarmed the girl; but he underrated both Gerda’s perspicacity and her pride. + 

There was something else on Gerda’s mind, too, beyond her personal indignation. What actually, he wondered, were these Blacksod gossips saying? He looked at the girl with a kind of paralyzed helplessness, and again the thought struck him how neat a stroke of chance it was that Redfern’s grave should be the background of her outburst. + 

“Some of you gentry,” she went on fiercely, “don’t lie abed with decent consciences like my folks! Why, they do say down at Farmer’s Rest that landlord Round do keep his bed, and that Squire Urquhart can get no peace by night or by day, because of what do taunt their minds over this poor young man.” + 

In spite of his discomfort, Wolf couldn’t help feeling faintly amused at Gerda’s struggle to keep the insidious Dorset dialect out of her speech, a struggle that grew less and less availing as her agitation rose. + 

“And these be the high-class people that you think so superior to respectable plain folk like my dear Dad!” Her voice had a quiver in it at this point that made Wolf cry out, “Gerda! Gerda darling!” But she did not break down. On the contrary, her tone grew stronger and more defiant. “Like my dear Dad,” she went on, “who never in his whole life said an evil word to anyone. But you get your spade and your turf and cover up this hole. Maybe you’ll catch the fox that made it and be surprised!” + 

“Come on, come on, Gerda,” said Wolf peevishly, stretching out his hand, in his turn, and trying to seize her fingers. “We mustn’t stay here like this. We shall be attracting attention soon. Come on; let’s go back to the field.” + 

His glance wandered from one to the other of these two figures who held his peace of mind so completely in their power. He could not shake off the profound inertia that had fallen upon him. + 

“But we must go back,” he murmured helplessly. “Come along, Gerda. Please do stop saying these things.” + 

His voice sounded in his own ears puerile, feeble, futile. It sounded like the petulance of a child, outraged and astonished by the tenacious obstinacy of grown-up people. + 

He had noticed on other occasions this peculiar psychic phenomenon⁠—that when he was with Gerda and his mother together, his personality shrank and dwindled until he felt his actual body grow limp and lumpish. The supercilious calmness of his mother’s face under her green parasol, the angry defiance of Gerda’s face under her simple school-treat hat, with its pale watchet-blue ribbons, seemed to paralyze him; so that all he could do was to bow before the storm, like a horse with its rump turned to the wind and its forehead turned to the fence! The male animal in him felt quelled and cowed by these two opposed currents of feminine emotion. Both of them seemed to him completely irrational at that moment. His mother’s patronizing irony seemed absurd, in conflict with the direct outburst of the other; and Gerda’s violence seemed pitifully uncalled-for. If he could have felt any sort of complacent superiority, he could have endured it more easily. But he felt no such superiority! Irrational though they both seemed to him, their personalities had never struck him as more attractive or more mysterious. Their very irrationality seemed drawn from some reservoir of life-energy that was richer, more real, more strange and vibrant than the lumpish bewilderment with which he confronted it. + 

As he looked from one to the other, and listened, without listening, to the rising torrent of Gerda’s wild words, he felt that it was absolutely impossible for him to take wholeheartedly one side or the other. He felt not only inert and helpless; but he felt as if he were himself torn into two halves by their struggle. He felt as if he incarnated at the same time his mother’s ironic detachment and his girl’s passionate grievance. All the long nights he had lain by Gerda’s side, all their sweet, secret caresses, clung, like a portion of life itself, to what he felt then for that young, troubled face under the watchet-blue ribbons. But in his mangled bifurcated identity it was impossible to feel hostile to the other figure. Longer nights with him had been hers, and closer caresses! How could he, for all the sweetness of his companion’s body, turn away from the flesh that was his own flesh? + 

Reason? Justice? The forces that victimized and paralyzed him now were those that had created the world. Who was he to contend against them? + 

Gerda came to a pause at last, and without a word to either of them walked off towards the school-treat field. + 

Then it was that Mrs. Solent turned upon her son with wide-open eyes and gave him a prolonged stare. + 

“Well!” she exclaimed at last, while her tilted parasol sank down, “there it is!⁠ ⁠… I think,” she resumed, slowly and casually, “I’ll go back to the cottage and do a little gardening before tea. If I mustn’t tidy up your graveyard, at least I can tidy up my landlord’s garden! Digging in the earth for an hour or two will give me an inspiration perhaps about all our affairs. I’m tired of this treat and I’ve done my share.” + 

“All right, Mother,” he said, casting a quick glance after Gerda, whose muslin frock and blue hat were now disappearing over the wall; “I’ll take you a little way and then go back.” + 

They walked round the church and out of the main entrance into the road. When they had passed the gate into the field, and were almost at the point where Pond Lane debouched from the village-street, they overtook the furtive figure of Jason Otter, hurrying surreptitiously homewards. + 

He gave a start of dismay when they came up with him. + 

“You won’t tell Urquhart you saw me,” he said hurriedly. “The truth is I can’t stand it any longer seeing that great lumbering gardener of his swaggering about at the wicket. No one can get the great fool out. He hits boundaries all the time. They oughtn’t to have let him play! He thinks because he won that bowling-match he can do everything. And, of course, with a lot of little boys like that, who consider he’s a great batsman⁠—” A look of dismay covered Jason’s face like a frayed shroud, as he spoke these words. + 

“They think he’s a kind of County Player,” he added gloomily. + 

“Were you playing yourself?” enquired Mrs. Solent. + 

“Any one of the Ramsgard second-eleven could send his bails flying!” continued Jason. “Wilson Minor would have got him out for a duck’s-egg.” + 

A faint wrinkling in the lines of the poet’s profile indicated that some mental image was exciting his proclivity to roguery. + 

“I’ve never heard of Wilson Minor,” murmured Wolf. + 

Jason cast a sidewise glance at him and then looked at Mrs. Solent. He seemed to imply that these intimate affairs of the Second Eleven of Ramsgard School were, where women were concerned, rather to be concealed than revealed. + 

“Do you know him?” enquired Wolf boldly, taking the bull by the horns. + 

There was a moment’s hesitation. + 

“He bowls left-handed,” Jason threw out. “They twist, too. This stall-fed head-gardener couldn’t stand up to them for a moment.” + 

“Is he a nice boy?” persisted Wolf. + 

“I like him,” said the other nervously. “I have only seen him three or four times. I took him to tea once at the Lovelace. But that was only because I wanted tea; and when I’m alone, that waiter always stares at me so. When I first spoke to him he thought I was a new master.” + 

“What does he think you are now?” said Wolf. + 

Jason chuckled. “An undertaker perhaps; or a private secretary, like you! But he sees I’m honest; and he knows I know a good bowler.” He paused for a second. “We all like to be praised!” he added grimly. + 

“Jason,” said Wolf, feeling a sudden qualm about Gerda, “why don’t you take my mother home? She’ll give you a splendid cup of tea⁠ ⁠… better than you could make for yourself at Pond Cottage⁠ ⁠… and I know there’ll be nobody in your house now. Mother, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? I know how well you two always get on.” He felt so impatient to be off, that he cared nothing for the effect of this suggestion upon either the poet or the lady. But Mrs. Solent looked not altogether displeased at this turn of events. + 

He hurried away now, avoiding any glance at Jason to discover how this prospect appealed to him. He had no difficulty in finding Gerda when he reached the field. She had not yet joined in any game, and it was quite easy to take her aside. She was in a mood of reserved apathy, neither apologetic nor defiant, just remote from the whole stream of events, and a little sad. + 

“Did you really hear all that about old Urquhart?” he asked her, anxious to distract her mind. + 

She smiled faintly; and he was so delighted to welcome that sign of a return to her normal self that he gave scant consideration to the substance of her reply. + 

“Well⁠—not in those very words, Wolf! But Dad do always tell that there was something queer about this young gentleman’s end; and if it weren’t the Squire, ’twere at least Landlord Round who folks have seen, mooning and mowling round that grave.” + 

“Come on, Gerda!”⁠—he spoke as energetically and gaily as he could⁠—“let’s hear what you really think! You don’t yourself think that it wasn’t an animal that made that hole, eh?” + 

“Let’s not talk about it any more,” the girl replied. “I was angry, and you know why; and you know that any girl who wasn’t made of rags and straw would have been angry! If I said more than I meant, you must forget it, Wolf, and forgive me.” + 

Together they advanced now, boldly and unhesitatingly, into the midst of the crowded field. They soon came upon Mattie and Olwen, hand in hand, watching a three-legged race, in which the most buxom and spirited of the maids of King’s Barton, tied together in couples, were contending for a bag of sugar-candy. + 

Olwen greeted Wolf with her usual passionate intensity. “Mattie won’t race,” she cried. “Do make her do it!” + 

“But you can race if you like,” Mattie retorted. “That big girl who looks like winning was ready to run with you.” Mattie turned to Gerda, as she said this, with something like an appeal. + 

“I don’t like racing,” she added. “Besides, I’m not dressed for it, am I?” and she glanced down at her new black frock. + 

“Oh, that’s nothing,” mumbled Wolf; and then, observing that Gerda had bent over the child and was diverting her attention, he took his sister’s arm and led her aside. “Everyone I’ve met today seems upset by something or other,” he began, as soon as they were well in the rear of the onlookers at the race. “I don’t know whether it’s because I’m nervous myself; but there’s a bad wind blowing from some quarter.” + 

“Do you think there’s something the matter with me?” she asked. “You’re too sympathetic, Wolf dear. To tell you the truth, I do feel rather grim this afternoon. I ought to have let them tie Olwen and me together; but I couldn’t bring myself to it. I hadn’t the heart for it.” + 

Wolf glanced back over the heads of the spectators. He could see that Gerda had possessed herself of the child’s hand and that they were both watching the proceedings with absorbed attention. + 

“They’re all right,” he whispered. “Let’s go for a bit of a stroll.” + 

They moved off together towards a vacant portion of the meadow, midway between the cricket-match and a noisy group of smaller boys. + 

“Now, what is it, Mattie?” he said, pressing her unmercifully. “I’ve seen you so little lately that I can’t follow your moods. But I’ve never seen such a depressed look. It’s far sadder, your face today, than when Mr. Smith died. It’s a different kind of sadness. It makes me wonder.” + 

“Dear Wolf! I assure you, you needn’t fret about me. I’m all right. You worry too much about people. You can’t take everyone’s sorrows on yourself. People have to go through things sometimes where no one can help them.” + 

Wolf stood stock-still and laid his hand on her wrist. + 

“Don’t begin those platitudes, Mattie, or you’ll make me angry. I don’t take anyone’s sorrows on myself. But you know⁠ ⁠… I feel as if⁠ ⁠…” He stopped short and stood hesitating, wondering how he would dare to broach the various troubled intimations that had been crossing his mind concerning her and Darnley. They moved on again, and his words still hung uncompleted in the air. + 

To help him out she tentatively repeated, “You feel as if?” + 

“Well⁠ ⁠… don’t be angry with me if I’m plunging into something too”⁠—he hesitated for a word⁠—“too frail to bear the weight of my clumsiness. But I’m not blind. I’ve seen that you and Darnley have something between you, some subtle understanding. I was glad to see it. You don’t know on what a long road it started my fancy! So now, when I see you looking ‘grim,’ as you call it, I can’t help thinking it must be because of⁠ ⁠… you know?⁠ ⁠… something gone wrong between you.” + 

Mattie gazed at him dumbfounded. + 

“But⁠ ⁠… Wolf⁠ ⁠… but⁠ ⁠…” she gasped. She looked so hopelessly confused and so wretchedly miserable, as she stood there before him, her heavy eyebrows twitching, as she frowned, and her mouth a little open, that Wolf was afraid he had made some gross blunder that might be terribly hurting to her reserved nature. + 

“But there’s nothing in it at all!” she cried pitifully. “Darnley and I are just friends. I’ve always felt he understood me better than anyone I’ve known. But that’s not much, Wolf. You know how many people I’ve known! There’s nothing more that’s between us, Wolf. What made you think there was?” + 

“Oh, all right, Mattie,” he muttered, rather sulkily. “I see you have to keep your affairs to yourself, and I’m not the one to force anything on you.” + 

He broke off; for he saw her face assume an expression that was completely new to him and to which he had no clue. + 

Swinging round, and following the direction of her eyes, he saw Darnley and Mrs. Otter coming straight across the grass towards them. + 

“I came to find Olwen,” the old lady began. “I’m going home now, and I thought it would leave you freer if I took her with me.” + 

“I’d much rather come back with you,” said Mattie. “But I expect I ought not to desert Mr. Valley quite as early as this. What is the time, Darnley?” Darnley looked vaguely round. “Oh, of course you haven’t your watch with you,” the girl went on. “Have you the time, Wolf?” Wolf looked at his watch, one of the few objects in his possession that was of monetary value. His Weymouth grandmother had given it to him as a child; and there were moments when merely to take it out of his pocket brought him a kind of reassurance, as of things quiet, stable, continuous, in the midst of turmoil. + 

“It’s ten minutes past seven,” he announced; and as they separated, he caught a look between Mattie and Darnley that made him wonder if, after all, his instinct had not been on the right track. + 

“Has the Squire gone home yet?” enquired Wolf, as he and Darnley walked slowly towards the cricket-pitch. + 

“I don’t know. I expect so,” the other answered absentmindedly; and then, as they came nearer: “No, he’s there still.” + 

When they reached the outskirts of the game they stood for a while in silence, a little behind the player who was fielding at “point.” Mr. Valley was umpiring on one side and Mr. Urquhart on the other; and it interested Wolf to note that it was his own hand that was instinctively lifted to salute the clergyman, and Darnley’s to salute the squire. One of the batsmen proved to be none other than Bob Weevil; and Wolf was sardonically amused at his own expense when he found that this fact gave him a thrill of unexpected relief. There was little chance, for some while, anyway, for Mr. Weevil and Gerda to pair off, unless the sausage-seller was prepared to sacrifice his reputation as a batsman to his amorous propensities; and, as Wolf watched him now, playing with skill and caution, this seemed the very last thing he was prepared for. + 

“What would you do, Solent,” began Darnley suddenly; and Wolf, glancing quickly at him, observed that his head was turned away and his gaze fixed intently upon the bowler at the further end of the pitch. “What would you do if you were in love with a girl and had at the same time some peculiarity that made all women repulsive to you?” + 

Wolf deliberately attuned his voice, as he replied to this, to a flat, dull intonation, as if Darnley had said, “What would you do if you were bowling at Bob Weevil and he had ‘got his eye in’?” + 

“It would entirely depend on who the girl was,” he said, keeping his gaze on the bare arms of the young grocer, as he balanced his bat in the block and bent his slim body forward. + 

“That’s all very well,” rejoined the other, “but you can’t go against nature beyond a certain point.” + 

Wolf raised his voice a little at this, as Bob Weevil, swinging his bat round, slogged the ball vigorously to leg and began to run. + 

“Nothing is against nature!” he retorted. “That’s the mistake people make; and it causes endless unhappiness.” + 

Darnley replied in three muttered, disjointed words, stressing each of them with a deliberation that had something ghastly in it. “Patience⁠ ⁠… pretend⁠ ⁠… perhaps.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Wolf paused to join in the loud general clapping that indicated that the batsmen had scored six runs. Then he pointed with his stick. “Come on,” he said, “there’s Miss Gault over there, watching the tug-of-war. Let’s go and speak to her. I particularly want to avoid getting caught in a long conversation; but, at the same time, I must speak to her. It would be outrageous not to. But if you come with me, Otter, I shall be safe.” + 

Darnley smiled and took his friend’s arm. + 

It was then, as they moved across the field together, that Wolf discovered that the touch of Darnley’s hand on his arm agitated his nerves to a pitch of exasperation. Inexplicable to himself, this mounting anger with the man he loved so well gradually grew so intense that he could hardly endure it. He exerted a superhuman effort to restrain his nervousness; but his friend’s very consciousness of his mood was rapidly making it impossible for him to control himself. + 

The sunshine made Darnley’s beard glitter, as if it were composed of shining gold; and this effect, though he noticed it calmly enough with one part of his mind, increased Wolf’s irritation. It was all he could do to prevent himself from seizing upon this beard and pulling it viciously. Darnley was now holding Wolf’s arm so tightly that he felt a blind impulse of animal resentment rising up within him⁠—an impulse upon which his nervous irritation rocked like a cork upon a wave. + 

“Avoid! Avoid!” he suddenly flung out; and with the same spasmodic impulse, as he uttered this strange cry, he tore his arm free. “It’s a trick! It’s a trick! It’s a trick!” He let his voice quiver without restraint, as he hissed out these words, though he knew perfectly well that the ugly contraction of the muscles of his mouth, as much as the word itself, must have been very agitating to his companion. But for this, just then, he cared nothing. If he could have made clear to that anxious face that now gazed at him so concernedly, what he really felt at that moment, it would have resolved itself into something like this: His mother and Gerda had lost their separate identities. They had become the point of a prodding shaft of yellow light that was at the same time the point of Darnley’s trim beard! This shaft was now pushing him towards another misery, which took the form of a taste in his mouth, a taste that he especially loathed, though he could only have defined it, even to himself, as the taste of salad and vinegar! But, whatever it was, this taste was Miss Gault. The shaft of yellow light that prodded him on had the power of thinning out and bleaching out his whole world, taking the moist sap quite away from it, leaving it like a piece of blown paper on an asphalt pavement. Between these two things⁠—the blighting light and the corrosive taste⁠—he felt an actual indrawn knot of impotence tying itself together within him, a knot that was composed of threads in his stomach, of threads in the pulses of his wrists, and of threads behind his eye-sockets! Everything in the world that was lovely and precious to him was being licked up by a mustard-coloured tongue, while a taste of constricting, devastating sourness began to parch his mouth. + 

They were now close behind the back-row of spectators. “She was here just now,” said Darnley. “She must have gone round to the other side.” Wolf knew perfectly well that his friend referred to Miss Gault, but he only murmured, in a weary, drawling voice, “Who’s that you say’s gone over to the other side?” + 

There was that in him that was ashamed of what he was doing⁠ ⁠… that in him that knew well enough that he was only behaving in this childish way because of his profound reliance upon Darnley’s affection and concern; but his nerves were so completely jangled by this time that he was just tinder-wood for any casual spark. + 

The spark soon came; for, emerging from the crowd, and coming straight to meet them, appeared the familiar figure of Mrs. Torp. Of all people in the world, Mrs. Torp was the very last with whom he felt himself capable of dealing just then. This did not prevent her from approaching them with extended hand, her face rigid and yet festive, bearing an expression like a waxen murderer’s in Madame Tussaud’s, while from the top of her bonnet a big purple feather nodded with a diabolic gaiety all its own. + 

If it had not been for this lively and obtrusive feather, Wolf might have retained his self-control; but this, combined with that rigid, festive smile, proved the last straw. + 

“Mrs. Torp! Mrs. Torp! Mrs. Torp!” he yelled, at the very top of his lungs. + 

“Stop that, now! Stop that, Wolf!” said Darnley sternly, seizing him by the elbow, just as he had done before. + 

“Quarrelling young gents, be ’ee?” said Mrs. Torp; while, in the hurried rush of his shame, Wolf, hardly knowing what he did, shook her vigorously by the hand. “You be too fine a figure of a man, Mr. Otter, to come to school-treat with brawlings and babblings brewed in pub-bar. Mercy! and what a face upon’s shoulders have our Mr. Solent got! Don’t let my Gerdie see ’ee with thik face. What be come to, young gents, what be come to?” + 

At this point Mrs. Torp was sidetracked in her volubility by the appearance of her son Lobbie at her side. “You get back, you limb of Edom, where you belong!” she cried, giving the boy a vigorous push. “What dost want here, dirty-face, ferreting round like the weasel thee be? Get back where ’ee belong, and don’t plague the gentry!” + 

But Wolf’s thundering outcry had made other heads turn about; and soon quite a little group began to gather round them. The voice of Mrs. Torp was naturally penetrating; and the nature of her discourse⁠—intermittently caught by inquisitive ears⁠—did not lessen this effect. Wolf and Darnley soon found themselves, in fact, in the unenviable position of a sort of sideshow to the main interest of the tug-of-war. It was clear enough, however, that none of these staring rustics had caught the real significance of Wolf’s unpardonable outburst. They must have simply supposed that in some fit of whimsical impatience he had peremptorily summoned his wife’s mother to that particular spot. + 

Such at least was the impression gathered up for future reference by that unclouded portion of Wolf’s own mind, which, like a calculating demon perched on the top of his head, calmly contemplated the whole scene. Mrs. Torp herself, as far as he could make out, never deviated one second from her preconceived notion of the incident; which was, to put it bluntly and grossly, that the two young gentlemen had had a drunken quarrel! + 

It was with a very distinct feeling of relief that Wolf, as he moved forward hurriedly now to meet the approach of no less a personage than Selena Gault, recognized that his father’s old friend had no conception of anything unusual in that cry, “Mrs. Torp! Mrs. Torp!” which, resounding across that small arena, had informed her of his presence there. + 

“Is poor Mrs. Torp to be dragged into this game, then?” said Selena, as she shook his hand. + 

Wolf muttered some lame jest about tug-of-wars and lean people, and then found it inevitable that he and Miss Gault should wander off together, leaving Darnley to deal with the Torp family. + 

His nerves were not yet altogether steady; for he found it necessary to reply in nothing but patient monosyllables to what Miss Gault was saying. By degrees, however, her discourse became so personal that these replies began to gather a dangerous intensity, although they still remained abrupt and brief. + 

“I’m glad to find you, boy. I’ve been hoping and hoping I should get a word with you.” + 

“Dear Miss Gault!” + 

“You’re not angry with me any more for opposing your plan about Mattie and Olwen? I confess it seems to have worked out better than I ever supposed it would.” + 

“No⁠ ⁠… no.” + 

“As long as she doesn’t meet that terrible old man or that crazy girl⁠—” + 

“What’s that?” + 

“Oh, I forgot. They tell me you yourself visit those people, Wolf.” + 

“Who tells you?” + 

“Of course, you have to go there for books. I understand that. But there are reasons which are hard to explain, boy, why I’d sooner see you enter⁠ ⁠… enter a workhouse⁠ ⁠… than go into that house.” + 

“Mr. Malakite was my father’s friend.” + 

She raised one of her gloved hands to her mouth at this, as if to restrain the quiverings of her upper-lip. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Wolf! His friend? That man corrupted his soul; and he did it with his accursed books.” + 

He was saved from making any answer to this by the sound of a familiar but by no means pleasant voice calling him by name. + 

“Mr. Solent! Mr. Solent!” + 

He turned on his heel and beheld Bob Weevil, still in his shirtsleeves, smiling and perspiring after a violent run. + 

“What’s up, Weevil?” he asked. + 

The young man bowed respectfully to Miss Gault and gasped for breath. + 

“Mr. Urquhart sent me to find you, sir,” he panted. “He says you must umpire now instead of him. He has to go now.” + 

“Mr. Solent is taking care of me, Weevil,” said Miss Gault indignantly. “What does the man mean by ‘must’ umpire? I don’t see where the ‘must’ comes in.” + 

Wolf looked the excited lad up and down. Miss Gault’s words had not abashed him in the least. There was even an air of spiteful arrogance in his manner, an air which seemed to say, “As the Squire’s emissary to his secretary, I am the most important person here.” + 

“I’m afraid there is a ‘must’ in this, Miss Gault,” Wolf said quietly. “It was agreed between us before we came on the scene that I was to umpire when Mr. Urquhart had to leave. It isn’t Mr. Weevil’s fault that he happens to be the messenger of ill-fortune!” + 

The lady drew herself up in high dudgeon. “Well! Run off, both of you, as fast as you can,” she said. + 

The annoyance of Miss Gault, thus expended upon both men, had the natural effect, as they went off together, of closing up in a measure the rift between them. + 

They passed the swings on their way, and a common masculine weakness for the sight of ruffled skirts held them for a moment behind a group of hobbledehoys who were enjoying this spectacle. + 

“They love swinging,” remarked Wolf carelessly, as Weevil and he moved away at last; “but those boys being there makes it delicious for them.” + 

Bob Weevil sighed deeply; and this pitiful sigh, rising up from the young man’s aggravated senses went wavering skyward. Past a high trail of flapping rooks, heading for Nevilton, it went; past the flocks of the white clouds. At last, far beyond all human knowledge, it lost itself in the incredible desirableness of lovely blue space, and mingled, for all we know, with the vast nonhuman sighing of the planet itself, teased by some monstrous cosmogonic lust! + 

Hearing this sound, Wolf glanced sideways at his young rival, and an unexpected flicker of sympathy for that water-rat profile ran through him. + 

They crossed the field in silence; and the thought that he was going to meet Mr. Urquhart recalled to Wolf’s mind that mysterious aperture in the side of Redfern’s grave. Could it be possible that there were in the village people so crazed by remorse for this boy’s death that they actually had been making mad attempts to disinter his bones? Such, at any rate, from what Gerda hinted, would not have struck these Dorsetshire gossips as impossible. But impossible, of course, it was! It was one of those morbidly monstrous fancies that, as he knew well from the Squire’s own collection of weird documents, did sometimes run the round of these West Country villages, passing from tavern to tavern, and growing more and more sinister as it went. Something in this quarter of the land, as soaked with legends as it was with cider-juice, seemed to lend itself to such tales! + 

“Well, sir!” he said, as he approached the wickets where Mr. Urquhart stood at attention like a sober sentinel on the ramparts of Elsinore, “I’m ready to relieve you.” + 

The cheerful complacence with which his employer accepted his docile obedience caused his nerves to assert themselves again in a surprising manner. + 

“If you’re going to say good night to Valley before you leave, sir,” he said brusquely, “you might tell him that something or somebody has been scratching a hole in that grave in the churchyard!” + 

A queer cowardice, or discretion perhaps, prevented him from looking at Mr. Urquhart’s face as he tossed out this remark. He followed it up, without a second’s pause, by crying out “Right you are!” to the batsman opposite him, and by moving hurriedly aside into his place, a yard or two from the wicket, so that the new “over” might commence. + 

All that he could take in of the effect of his words was the look of his employer’s back, as the man moved away, not at all in the direction of the clergyman’s black-coated figure, but straight towards the little group of spectators who surrounded the seated form of Roger Monk, occupied just then in keeping the score. + 

Mr. Urquhart’s back, as Wolf followed it with his eyes at that moment, seemed to him to resemble the back of Judas Iscariot in that popular picture entitled Pieces of Silver, of which there used to hang a cheaply coloured reprint in his grandmother’s house at Weymouth. It did more than stoop with its usual aristocratic bend, this back. It sagged, it lurched, it wilted. It drifted towards that bench of heedless spectators as if it had been the hindquarters of the Biblical scapegoat, driven forth into a wilderness whose desolation was not material, but psychic. The neat clothes that hung upon it only accentuated the ghastliness of this back’s retreat. + 

It may be believed that Wolf’s umpiring was not of the most alert or efficient kind that evening. But it sufficed; it served its purpose. For the game itself was dragging a little tediously now, and most of the lads were weary of it and longing in their hearts for the grand consummation of the eventful day. + 

This was the hour of the twilight dancing, a celebration that, taking place in a roped-off portion of the meadow furthest removed from the churchyard, was the supreme source of responsibility and concern to the authorities⁠—the thrilling climax and crowning episode to the boys and girls of King’s Barton! + 

Long before the cricket-match was over, all the other sports had drawn to a close. Tired groups of children, disputing about their prizes and gorging themselves with butterscotch and barley-sugar torn from sticky paper bags, drifted across the hill towards the gate, followed by voluble mothers with overflowing parcels and sleeping babies clutched tightly in their arms. The older men had found themselves seats here and there, and were smoking their pipes with an air of cautious relaxation, an air that stopped short of the complete abandonment of Farmer’s Rest and yet had unstiffened beyond the superceremonious atmosphere of the earlier hours of the afternoon. + 

The youths and the maidens, from all parts of the field, along with a drifting concourse of outsiders attracted by the occasion, gathered now, impatiently and nervously, round the weary cricketers. + 

The Kingsbury Band, duly stimulated by its full quota of traditional refreshment, was now tuning up for the great moment of that gala-day. At length, to Wolf’s infinite relief, the last bails fell; the captains of the two sides pulled up the wickets; the score was proclaimed in indifferent tones and amid lethargic cheers; and the whole company hurried towards the dancing-plot. + 

Wolf, as he looked about for Gerda, crossed inadvertently the path of the perturbed Mr. Valley. + 

“It’ll be dark in an hour,” said the anxious Vicar, glancing up at the sky; “but they will hardly have begun then.” + 

“There’s a nice scent of trodden grass in the air,” remarked Wolf. + 

“What a time! What a time!” wailed the little priest, disregarding the interruption. + 

“What’s wrong, my dear man?” sighed Wolf indifferently, searching with his eyes the groups who passed by for a glimpse of Gerda’s white gown. “What’s troubling you? Dancing’s all right. There’s no harm in dancing.” + 

The little priest laid his hand upon the front of Wolf’s coat. “Dancing!” he muttered peevishly. “Oh, you Londoner, you Londoner! It’s not the dancing I’m thinking about. Do you suppose it’s only for the dancing that all these men are collecting? I tell you I’ve never known one single visit of the Kingsbury Band to this place when there hasn’t been some girl⁠—and they’re always the wrong ones⁠—got into trouble! If I could keep ’em penned up in these ropes, they might dance till dawn!” + 

Wolf made a grimace and moved away. There seemed to him, at that moment, as he thought of Gerda and his mother, such far worse things in the world than the episodes dreaded by Mr. Valley, that he found it impossible to give him the remotest sympathy. Mr. Valley, without knowing it, however, had his full revenge for this callousness in less than a minute from when they parted. For there was Gerda’s white gown! And there, side by side with it, were Mr. Bob Weevil’s white shirtsleeves!⁠ ⁠… As he walked up to them trying to assume his most invulnerable philosophic calm, Wolf thought to himself, “I’ll let her dance one dance with him and then off we’ll go⁠ ⁠… back to Blacksod!” + 

They did not observe his approach till he was quite close. + 

“Hullo, Gerda! Hullo, Bob! Look here, you two.” He paused awkwardly, staring at Gerda’s sash. “I don’t want,” he went on, “I don’t want⁠—” He seemed to catch a defiant look on the girl’s face. “I don’t want to break this up till you’ve danced once tonight. So go ahead, for heaven’s sake, as soon as they start.⁠ ⁠… Only, listen, Weevil⁠—” He paused again, and found it necessary to take several long breaths. He had said exactly what he meant to say. He had said it in the tone he meant to adopt. Why, then, were those two staring at him like that, as if he were a ghost? Did his face look funny to them? Was “the form of his visage changed” upon them? “I mean,” he went on; but his voice sounded unsure to his own ears now⁠—unsure and queerly mechanical, as if it issued out of a wooden box. “I mean that you’d better have one good dance, or perhaps two⁠ ⁠… two certainly! Two would be far better than one⁠ ⁠… one dance is nothing⁠ ⁠… What’s one dance? Nothing at all! And then⁠ ⁠… and then⁠ ⁠… what was I going to say? That band’s making such a noise!⁠ ⁠… Oh, then we’ll walk home, Gerda; and perhaps Bob will come with us. But I expect not, with Mr. Valley so jumpy.” + 

“What are you talking about, Wolf?” said Gerda abruptly. “What’s the matter with you? Is there anything wrong? I thought we’d agreed that I was to stay for the dancing. You’ve no objection to my dancing with Bob, have you?” + 

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Solent,” broke in the voice of the young grocer, “but what was that you said about Mr. Valley being ‘jumpy’? I couldn’t hear what you said; and I don’t see, anyway, what it’s got to do with me.” + 

“Did we decide that I had to wait till midnight for you, Gerda?” said Wolf sternly, disregarding Mr. Weevil. + 

“Oh, let me be! Let me be, Wolf!” cried the girl angrily. “I don’t know what’s come over you tonight⁠ ⁠… you and your mother! I suppose you’ve been over there again and she’s been talking to you again. I don’t know what you take me for! I’ve danced at King’s Barton School-Treat since I was no bigger than Lobbie. I don’t know what you’ve got against it, or against me and Bob. You’ve been over to Lenty Cottage! That’s where you’ve been; and she’s sent you back to punish me for what I said to her. I haven’t said I was going to dance with Bob at all. Bob isn’t my only friend here. Mother’s going to stop to the end. She always does. And I shall go back with her. I don’t want either you or Bob, I tell you! You’ve never treated me like this before and I won’t stand it! You can walk back with him if you like, Bob. I’ll be glad enough to see the last of both of you! I want to enjoy myself tonight.” She moved away as she spoke, and Wolf caught a look of miserable consternation upon the water-rat physiognomy at his side. “I don’t want any men to dance with!” she flung back at them. “I’ll dance with no one but girls. But I will enjoy myself in spite of you all! I won’t depend on any of you for my pleasure⁠ ⁠… and I’ll go home with Father and Mother!” + 

She walked off haughtily, her blue-ribboned hat held high, and was speedily lost to sight in the gathering crowd. + 

Wolf and Mr. Weevil stood staring at each other stonily and awkwardly while the long-awaited music burst triumphantly into the familiar strains of the Kingsbury Jig. + 

After a few seconds, with an abrupt lifting of his hand, Wolf moved away. He pushed through the crowd with the air of a complete stranger who finds his path impeded by some popular transaction that means nothing to him. + 

On the outskirts of the field he was arrested by the sight of a figure that seemed familiar to him. Yes! It was the automatic young lady from Farmer’s Rest. But there was another girl there⁠—a younger girl⁠—and he recognized her too. She was the maid in the white muslin frock whose shameless manner of swinging had arrested Weevil and him an hour ago. This younger girl’s head was turned away; but as he approached them, he caught a full glimpse of the automatic young lady’s face. She was too absorbed, however, in what she was doing⁠—fastening a safety-pin or something in the other’s waistband⁠—to give the least attention to him. But what was this? The look he captured upon her face was a look of unmistakable emotion, rapt, intense emotion, such as a boy would have displayed when he was caressing the object of his desire. Like a flash it came over Wolf, as he wavered there for a second, that he was in the presence of a passionate perversity, kindred to that he had discovered elsewhere in this Dorsetshire village; and he was a little startled to find how the presence of it set his heart beating and his pulses throbbing. Something in him pleaded desperately to be allowed to remain a second longer on this unhallowed ground; but he resisted the temptation, and hurried forward. But what did this mean? How could he explain this in himself? That kindred obliquity, which he had so recently tracked down among the “higher circles” of King’s Barton, had not affected him to anything resembling this degree of vicious sympathy! The vision of those two girls remained like a deadly-sweet drop of delicious fermentation in some vein within him⁠—some vein or nerve that seemed in contact with the very core of his consciousness. Like some virulent berry-juice, insidiously sweet and yet maddeningly bitter, like a drop of that old classic poison distilled from the blood of the enamoured centaur⁠—that look, that gesture of the Farmer’s Rest girl teased and troubled him. The averted head of her muslin-frocked companion, the contour of that soft, conscious, youthful profile, stirred his senses even more. + 

“Damn!” he thought. “Don’t I yet know the worst of my vicious, secretive nature?” + 

He felt startled rather than ashamed by what arose within him; but what did trouble him, to a kind of inward fury, as he left those preoccupied girls, was the ricochet of this discovery upon his jealousy over Gerda and Bob! Who was he to indulge in sulky jealous heroics, when he himself was capable of a feeling like this? To be angry with those two, to be bitterly hurt, and yet not to be able to indulge in the undertone of his own grievance without knowing himself to be an unphilosophic fool⁠—that was the point of the spiritual wedge that now was driven into his disordered life-illusion! + 

Was Lord Carfax, that whimsical “man of the world,” of whom his mother loved to relate the shameless opinions, right after all? Had he always overrated the connection between sex and that mysterious struggle in the abysses, with which his “mythology” was concerned? + 

In regard to the perversity of Mr. Urquhart, he had taken for granted that the man’s sex-aberration was merely the medium through which unspeakable emanations of evil⁠—beyond sex altogether!⁠—flowed up into the world. + 

“But what is this evil?” he asked himself now letting his mind hover like a hungry cormorant over the heaving waters of his troubled senses. Vague intimations concerning some sort of inert malice, that was beyond all viciousness, rose up within him as his mind’s deepest response. Hunting irritably for some gap in the hedge by which to escape, he tried to define this inert malice. Was it an atavistic reversion to the primordial “matter,” or “world-stuff”⁠—sluggish, reluctant, opaque⁠—out of which, at the beginning of things, life had had to force its way? Was this, and not his attitude to any youthful Redfern, the real secret of Urquhart’s harmfulness? + 

All the while he struggled with these thoughts, he kept feverishly skirting the hedge, striking it every now and then with his stick. If he could only find a gap by which to escape! This hunt of his for a gap into the next field began to assume almost symbolic proportions. Something within him was tugging at him all the while to make him turn his head and cast another furtive glance at those two girls. Were they still together there, just where he had left them? He began to indulge his imagination, letting it tantalize and provoke him with the tremulous intensity of the feeling that sight might have aroused. He knew he could cool his excitement, blunt it, undermine it, stave it off, by analyzing its nature; but the feeling itself was so deadly-sweet to him that it pleaded in “a still, small voice” for a postponement of this invasion of his reason! + 

Was it his jealousy over Gerda that had made him so porous to this quivering, breathtaking obsession? Indignantly his soul shook itself to and fro in its endeavour to escape. Like a slippery-scaled fish it shook itself, turning sideways, turning belly-up, as it strove to force its way through the strands of the net that encircled it. Why was it that this glimpse of the amorous feeling of one girl for another girl should send this trembling, dissolving, shuddering provocation through him? Was it that the mere importunity of the feeling, so intense, so sterile, emphasized the mysterious quality of desirableness? Did it imply a diffusion of the magic of beauty through the whole identity of the desired one, such as can rarely take place where great creative Nature, contemptuous towards both lover and beloved, shamelessly occupied with her own enormous purposes, is baiting the trap? + 

What a queer thing it was that the attraction of this muslin-frocked little hoyden should have been barely emphasized for him by Weevil’s desire for her, but increased to a point of shivering, electric sweetness, under the emotion of the “automatic young lady”! Oh! it had that within it that might lead him upon such a quest that nothing else would matter to him any more! He could feel even now, as he went along this stubborn hedge, the sort of scoriac desolation⁠—all delicate intimations become cinders and ashes in the mouth⁠—that would possess him, as this quest grew more and more concentrated! He felt within him the actual expression his face would come to wear, as in his maniacal pursuit he went to and fro over the earth, oblivious of all else. + 

He had just reached this point in his mental struggle, when he suddenly did find a gap in the obstinate hedge. Forcing his way hurriedly through, careless as to how he pricked his face and hands, he descended from the high hedge-bank into a field of mangelwurzels. Over this field he now strode, while the gathering twilight deepened about him, oblivious of all purpose save to escape⁠—to escape into the peace of his own soul. + 

The mangelwurzel-field behind him at last, he blindly pushed his way through a second hedge, this time caring not even to find a gap. What next awaited him was a succession of stubble-fields, some of which had patches of purple clover growing amid their cornstalks, the dark foliage of which, soaked with heavy dew, quickly penetrated his boots. This physical sensation, the sensation of walking barefoot through an endless dew-drenched twilight, gradually soothed and calmed him. + 

He went obstinately forward, crossing field after field in the falling darkness, forcing his way recklessly through every sort of rank vegetation, through every sort of arable fallowness. He had left the school-treat field for more than an hour now. He had crossed, almost without consciousness of doing so, the main road between Ramsgard and Blacksod. He had threaded his way through the maze of small, grassy lanes that lay between that highway and the village of Gwent. And now, emerging in the scented autumn night into a rondure of sloping hills, he could see, beyond the scattered lights of Gwent, a vast unbounded region, shadow within shadow, vapour within vapour, a region that he knew to be⁠—though all he could actually see was darkness of a thicker, richer quality than the darkness about him⁠—the umbrageous threshold of Somerset, the first leafy estuary of that ocean of greenness out of which rose, like the phallus of an unknown god, the mystical hill of Glastonbury! + 

He stretched himself out on the grassy slope of this shadowy amphitheatre and gazed long and long into the vaporous obscurity before him. The quarrel between Gerda and his mother became nothing. Nothing and less than nothing became his jealousy over Weevil⁠ ⁠… his vision of those two girls! + 

It was as though he had suddenly emerged, by some hidden doorway, into a world entirely composed of vast, cool, silently-growing vegetation, a world where no men, no beasts, no birds, broke the mossy stillness; a world of sap and moisture and drooping ferns; a world of leaves that fell and fell forever, leaf upon leaf; a world where that which slowly mounted upwards endured eternally the eternal lapse of that which slowly settled downwards; a world that itself was slowly settling down, leaf upon leaf, grass-blade upon grass-blade, towards some cool, wet, dark, unutterable dimension in the secret heart of silence! + 

Lying upon that rank, drenched grass, he drew a deep sigh of obliterating release. It was not that his troubles were merely assuaged. They were swallowed up. They were lost in the primal dew of the earth’s first twilights. They were absorbed in the chemistry, faint, flowing, and dim, of that strange vegetable flesh which is so far older than the flesh of man or beast! + 

He stretched out one of his hands and touched the cool-scaled stalks of a bed of “mare’s tails.” Ah! how his human consciousness sank down into that with which all terrestrial consciousness began!⁠ ⁠… + 

He was a leaf among leaves⁠ ⁠… among large, cool, untroubled leaves.⁠ ⁠… He had fallen back into the womb of his real mother.⁠ ⁠… He was drenched through and through with darkness and with peace. + 