Windyridge Part 5

"Yes, love," said Mother Hubbard, but I doubt if she understood.

Mother Hubbard was in excellent trim, and I am beginning to think that there must be a good deal of reserve force in her delicate-looking little body. She led me to the brow of the hill whence one gets an unexpected view of the enchanting beauty of the Romanton valley, and said "There!" with such an air of proud proprietors.h.i.+p, as if she had ordered the show for my special gratification, that I laughed outright.

I negotiated the steep downward path with difficulty, but she went steadily on with the a.s.surance of familiarity, pausing at intervals to point out the more notable landmarks.

We had lunch at one of the large hotels, and if Rose had seen the spread I ordered she would have had good cause to charge me with "sw.a.n.kiness," but I was having a "day out," and such occurrences at Windyridge are destined to be uncommon. Besides, no fewer than three magazines are going to print my old lady's picture, so the agents have sent me thirty s.h.i.+llings--quite a decent sum, and one which you simply _cannot_ spend on a day's frolicking in these regions.

When it was over Mother Hubbard showed me all the lions of the place; and after we had drunk a refres.h.i.+ng cup of tea at a cafe that would do no discredit to Buckingham Palace Road we set out on the return journey.

I was tired already, but I soon forgot the flesh in the spirit sensations that flooded me. We were now traversing the miniature high road which skirts the edge of the moor, and reveals a scene of quiet pastoral beauty along its entire length which is simply charming. I cannot adequately describe it, but I know that viewed in the opalescent light of the early setting sun it was just a fairy wonderland.

The valley is beautifully wooded, and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba together were not so gorgeously arrayed as were the trees on the farther side. A white thread of river gleamed for a while through the meadows, but was soon lost in the haze of evening.

Comfortable grey farms and red-tiled villas lent a homely look to the landscape, and at intervals we pa.s.sed pretty cottages with old-fas.h.i.+oned gardens, where the men smoked pipes and stood about in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, whilst the women lounged in the gateways with an eye to the children whose bed-time was come all too soon for the unwilling spirit.

And, best of all, my journey ended with a great discovery. We had climbed a steep hill, and after a last long look back over my fairy valley I set my face to the dull and level fields. Two hundred yards farther and my astonished eyes saw down below--the back of my own cottage!

That night no vision of factory chimneys disturbed the serenity of my sleep, for a haunting fear had been dispelled.

CHAPTER VII

THE CYNIC DISCOURSES ON WOMAN

"Woman," said the Cynic sententiously, "may be divided into five parts: the Domestic woman, the Social woman, the Woman with a Mission, the New Woman, and the Widow."

"Nonsense!" snapped the vicar's wife, "the widow may be any one of the rest. The mere accident of widowhood cannot affect her special characteristics. The worst of you smart men is that you entirely divorce verity from vivacity. The domestic woman is still a domestic woman, though she become a widow."

"No," returned the Cynic, "the widow is a thing apart, if I may so designate any of your captivating s.e.x. Domestic she may still be in a certain or uncertain subordinate sense, just as the social woman or the woman with a mission may have a strain of domesticity in her make-up; but when all has been said she is still in a separate cla.s.s; she is, in fact--a widow."

"I remember reading somewhere," I remarked, "that a little widow is a dangerous thing. Manifestly the author of that brilliant epigram was of your way of thinking. He would probably have cla.s.sed her as an explosive."

He turned to me and smiled mockingly.

"I think all men who have seriously studied the subject, as I have, must have formed a similar opinion. The widow is dangerous because she is a widow. She has tasted of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

She knows the weak places in man's defensive armour. She has acquired skill in generals.h.i.+p which enables her to win her battles. Added to all this is the pathos of her position, which is an a.s.set of no inconsiderable value. She knows to a tick of time when to allure by smiles and melt by tears, and woe to the man who thinketh he standeth when she proposes his downfall."

"My dear Derwent," interposed the squire from the other side the hearth; "you speak, no doubt, from a ripe experience, if an outside one, and no one here will question your authority; but surely the new woman and the woman with a mission may be bracketed together."

The squire was leaning back in a comfortable saddle-bag, one leg thrown easily over the other and his hands clasped behind his head. A tolerant half-smile hung about the corners of his lips and lurked in the shadows of his eyes. He has a grand face, and it shows to perfection on an occasion like this.

The vicar sat near him. He is a spare, rather cadaverous man, who lives among Egyptian mummies and a.s.syrian tablets and palimpsests and first editions, and knows nothing of any statesman later than Cardinal Wolsey. An open book of antiquities lay upon his knee, and his finger-tips were pressed together upon it, but the eyes which blinked over the top of his gold-rimmed spectacles were fixed upon s.p.a.ce, and the Cynic's vapourings were as unheeded as yesterday.

The vicar's wife is the very ant.i.thesis of her husband. She is a plump, round-faced little body, and was tidily dressed in a black silk of quite modern style with just a trace of elegance, and a berthe of fine old lace which made me break the tenth commandment every time I looked at her. She was evidently on the best of terms with herself, and stood in no awe of anybody, and least of all of the Cynic, whom she regarded with a half-affectionate, half-contemptuous air. She had a way of tossing her head and pursing her lips when he was more than usually aggressive that obviously amused him. I had soon found out that they were old antagonists.

The Cynic himself puzzled me. I scarcely dared to look at him very closely, for I had the feeling that none of my movements escaped his notice, and I had not been able to decide whether his age was thirty or fifty. He is of average height and build, and was somewhat carelessly dressed, I thought. His dinner jacket seemed rather loose, and his starched s.h.i.+rt was decidedly crumpled. I wondered who looked after his menage.

His hands are clean and shapely, and he knows where to put them, which is generally an indication of good breeding and always of a lack of self-consciousness, and from their condition I judged that he earned his bread in the sweat of his brain rather than of his brow.

As to his face--well, I liked it. It is dark, but frank and open, and he has a good mouth, which can be seen, because he is clean shaven, and his teeth are also good. But then in these degenerate days anyone who has attained middle life may have good teeth: it is all a matter of money.

I think it is the eyes that make the face, however. They are deep grey and remarkably luminous, and on this occasion they simply bubbled over with mischievousness. His smile was never very p.r.o.nounced, and always more or less satirical, but his eyes flashed and sparkled when he was roused, though they had looked kindly and even plaintive when he arrived, and before he was warmed. He is the sort of man who can do all his talking with his eyes.

A high forehead is surmounted by a ma.s.s of hair--once black, but rapidly turning grey--which he evidently treats as of no importance, for it lies, as the children say, "anyhow." But how old he is--I give it up.

He pa.s.sed his hand through his hair now, with a quick involuntary movement, as he turned to the squire.

"You may bracket the new woman and the woman with a mission together, but you can never make them one. That they have some things in common is nothing to the point. The new woman, as I understand her, has no mission, not even a commission. The new woman is Protest, embodied and at present skirted, but with a protest against the skirt. Her most longed-for goal is the Unattainable, and if by some chance she should reach it she would be dismayed and annoyed. Meantime, with the vision before her eyes of the table of the G.o.ds, she cries aloud that she is forced to feed on husks, and as she must hug something, hugs a grievance."

"Philip Derwent," interposed the vicar's wife, "you are in danger of becoming vulgar."

"Vulgarity, madam," he rejoined, "is in these days the brand of refinement. It is only your truly refined man who has the courage to be vulgar in polite society. No other dares to call a spade a spade or a lie a lie. Those who wish to be considered refined speak of the one as an 'agricultural implement' and of the other as a 'terminological inexact.i.tude.' But to return to our sheep who are clamouring for wolves' clothing----"

"Really, Philip!" protested the vicar's wife, pursing her lips more emphatically than ever.

"The latest incarnation of Protest, if I may so speak, takes the form of a demand for the suffrage, and is accompanied by much beating of drums and----"

"Smas.h.i.+ng of windows," I ventured.

He bowed. "And smas.h.i.+ng of windows. By and by they will get their desire."

"And so have fulfilled their mission," the squire smiled.

"By no means; they have no mission; they have simply a hunger, or rather a pain which goes away when their appet.i.te is stayed, and comes on again before the meal has been well digested. Then they go forth once more seeking whom or what they may devour."

"Tell us of the woman with a mission," I pleaded.

"Miss Holden is anxious to discover in what category she is to be cla.s.sed," laughed the squire. "You are treading on dangerous ground, Derwent. Let me advise you to proceed warily."

"Mr. Evans, when a boy at school I learned the Latin maxim--'Truth is often attended with danger,' but I am sure Miss Holden will be merciful towards its humble votary."

I smiled and he continued: "The woman with a mission, Miss Holden, is an altogether superior creature. She may be adorable; on the other hand she may be a nuisance and a bore. Everything depends on the mission--and the woman."

"A safe answer, Philip," sneered the vicar's wife, and the squire smiled.

"There is no other safe way, madam, than the way of Truth, and I am treading it now. Even if the woman be a nuisance, even if the mission be unworthy, she who makes it hers may be enn.o.bled. Let us a.s.sume that she believes with all her heart that she has been sent into the world for one definite purpose--shall we say to work for the abatement of the smoke nuisance? That involves, amongst other things----"

"Depriving poor weak man of his chief solace--tobacco," snapped the vicar's wife.

"Exactly. Now see how this strengthens her character, and calls out qualities of endurance and self-sacrifice. The poor weak man, her husband, deprived of his chief solace, tobacco, turns to peppermints, moroseness and bad language. His courtesy is changed to boorishness, his placidity to snappishness. All this is trying to his wife, but being a woman with a mission she regards these things philosophically as incidental to a transition period, and she bears her cross with ever-increasing gentleness and----"

"Drives her husband to the devil and herself into the widows'

compartment," interrupted the vicar's wife, with disgust in her voice.

"Miss Holden, do you sing?"