A Dozen Ways Of Love Part 24

'I wants to ask ye two questions; will ye answer like an honest man?'

She had laid aside all her loud rudeness, and was speaking with intense earnestness--an earnestness that won his entire respect.

'I will indeed answer you honestly, if I can answer.'

'Then tell me this--What's the soal o' a man?'

He stood with lips sealed, partly by surprise at the question, and partly by self-acknowledged ignorance of the answer.

'The soal o' a man,' she repeated more distinctly, 'ye knows what I mean surely?'

Yes, he knew what she meant, but he knew also that his own most honest convictions hovered between a materialist philosophy and faith in the spiritual unseen. If at that moment he could have decided between the two he would gladly have done so, for the sake of the eager woman sitting at his feet, but he knew that he did not know which was the truth.

She, still labouring under the impression that she had not made her meaning plain, endeavoured to explain. 'Ye knows when a man dies, there's two parts to him; one they buries, and one goes--' she pointed upward with her thumb, not irreverently, but as merely wis.h.i.+ng to indicate a fact without the expense of words.

'Yes, I understand what you mean,' he said slowly, 'and under that theory, the soul----'

'Under what?' she said sharply.

'I mean that if you say the soul is divided from the body at death----'

'But it is--ain't it?' she interrupted.

'Yes, it is,' he said, feeling that it was better to perjure himself than to shake her faith.

'Go on,' she said, 'for parson says the soal is the thing inside that thinks; but when a man's luny, ye knows--off his head like--has he no soal then? I've looked i' the Catechis', an' i' Bible, an' i'

Prayer-book, an' fur the life o' me, I doan't know.'

'I don't wonder at that,' he said, with mechanical compa.s.sion, casting about in his mind for some possible motive for her extraordinary vehemence.

He felt as certain, standing there, that this was a true woman, true to all the highest attributes of her nature, as if he had been able to weigh all the acts of her life and find none of them wanting. In the midst of his perplexity he found time to ask himself whence he had this knowledge. Did he read it in the lines of her face, or was it some unseen influence of her mind upon his own? He had only time to question, not to answer, for she looked up in his face with the trust and expectation of a child, awaiting his words.

He spoke. 'You say when a man dies he is divided into two parts--the body that rots and the part "that lives elsewhere."' He was speaking very slowly and distinctly. 'If that part of a man which lives goes to Heaven, where everything is quite different from this, he could have no use for most of his thoughts--what we call opinions, for they are formed on what he sees, and hears, and feels here. Look here!'--he held out his arm and moved it up and down from the elbow--'there are nerves and muscles; behind them is something we call life--we don't know what it is. And behind your thoughts and feeling there is the same life--we don't know what it is. The part of you that you say goes to Heaven must be that life. If you ask me what I think, I think the greater part of what you call mind is part of your body. If your body can live a spirit life, so can it; but it would need as much changing first.'

It was most extraordinary to him to see the avidity with which she drank in his words, and also the intelligence with which she seemed to master them, for she cried--

'What's i' the soal then? When ye _will_ to do a thing agen all costs, is that i' the soal?'

'Certainly the spirit must be the self, and the will, as far as we know, is that self--more that self than anything else is.' He spoke in the pleased tone of a schoolmaster who finds that the mind beneath his touch is being moulded into the right shape; and besides he supposed he could question her next.

'I _knowed_ that,' she said, with an intensity of conviction that confounded her listener, 'I _knowed_ the soal was will.'

'It must be intelligence, and will, and probably memory,' he said, beguiled into the idea that she was interested in the nicety of his theory, 'but not in any sense that activity of mind which shows itself in the opinions most men conceive so important.'

But of this she took no heed. 'When a man's off his head or par'lysed, wi' no more life in him than babe unborn--yet when he's living and not dead--where's his soal then? Parson he says the soal's sleeping inside him afore going to glory, like a grub afore it turns into a fly; but I asked him how he knowed, and he just said he knowed, an' I mun b'lieve, and that's no way to answer an honest woman.'

'He did not really know.'

'Well, tell what you knows,' she said.

'Indeed, I do not know anything about it.'

'Ye doan't know!'

'I do not know.'

The animation of hope slowly faded from her face, giving place to a look of bitter disappointment. It was as if a little child, suddenly denied some darling wish, should have strength to restrain its tears and mutely acquiesce in the inevitable.

'Then there's nowt to say,' she said, rising, sullen in the first moment of pain.

'But you'll tell me why you have asked?' he begged; 'I am very sorry indeed that I cannot answer.'

'Noa, I'll not tell ye, fur it's no concern o' yours; but thank ye kindly, sir, all the same. Yer an honest man. Good-day.'

With that she walked resolutely away, nor would she accept his offer of payment for the food she had given. He stood and watched her, feeling checkmated, until he saw her exchange greetings with the ploughman, who reached the end of his furrow as she pa.s.sed the side of the field.

Seeing this, he took up his specimens and walked slowly in the same direction, waiting for the ploughman's next return. As he stood at the hedge he noticed that the labourer, who appeared to be a middle-aged man of average intelligence, surveyed him with more than ordinary interest.

'Good-day,' he said.

'Good-day, sir.' There was a clank of the chains, a shout and groan to the horses, and they stopped beside the hedge.

'Can you tell me the name of the young woman who pa.s.sed down the road just now?'

'Jen Wilkes, sir; "Jen o' the glen" they calls 'er, for she lives in the holler down there, a bit by on the town road, out of West Chilton.'

'She has not lived here long, surely; she seems a north country woman by her speech.'

'Very like, sir; it's a while by sin' she came with 'er mother to live i' Chilton.'

It was evident that the ploughman had much more to say, and that he wished to say it, but his words did not come easily.

'Can you tell me anything more about her?' The man rubbed his coa.r.s.e beard down upon his collar, and clanked his chains, and made guttural sounds to his horses, which possibly explained to them the meaning he did not verbally express. Then he looked up and made a facial contortion, which clearly meant that there was more to be said concerning Jen if any one could be found brave enough to say it.

'I feel a.s.sured she is everything that is good and respectable.'

At this the ploughman could contain himself no longer, but heaving up one shoulder and looking round to see that there was no one to hear, he blurted out--''Ave you seen 'er shadder, sir?'

'Her what?'

''Er shadder. I seen you so long with 'er on the road I thought maybe you'd tried to 'ave a kiss. Gentlemen mostly thinks a sight of Jen's looks; an' it ain't no harm as I knows on to kiss a tidy girl, if y'ain't married, or th' missus don't object.'

'And if I did, what has that to do with it? What do you mean by her shadow?'

'Oh, I dunno; I h'ain't seen nothing myself; but they says, whenever any has tried to be friendly with 'er, they's seed something not just o' the right sort. They calls it 'er shadder--but I dunno, I h'ain't seen nothing myself.'

When we are suddenly annoyed, by whatever cause, we are apt to vent our annoyance upon the person nearest to us; and at this unlooked-for corroboration of his unpleasant vision, the gentleman said rudely, 'You're not such a fool as to believe such confounded trash as that, are you?'

'No sir, I'm no fool,' said the ploughman sulkily, starting his horses to go up the furrow. In vain the other called out an attempted apology, and tried to delay him; the accustomed shout and clank of the chains was all he got in answer. The birds that had settled upon the field rose again at the return of the horses, and curveted in a long fluttering line above their heads. The man on the road turned reluctantly away, and, too perplexed almost for thought, walked off to catch his home-bound train.