The Hillman Part 6

John muttered a word or two of polite but unconvincing protest. They stood together awaiting his approach. Stephen had apparently lost none of his dourness of the previous night. He was dressed in gray homespun, with knickerbockers and stockings of great thickness. He wore a flannel s.h.i.+rt and collar and a black wisp of a tie. Underneath his battered felt hat his weather-beaten face seemed longer and grimmer than ever, his mouth more uncompromising. As he looked toward Louise, there was no mistaking the slow dislike in his steely eyes.

"Your chauffeur, madam, has just returned," he announced. "He sent word that he will be ready to start at one o'clock."

Louise, inspired to battle by the almost provocative hostility of her elder host, smiled sweetly upon him.

"You can't imagine how sorry I am to hear it," she said. "I don't know when, in the whole course of my life, I have met with such a delightful adventure or spent such a perfect morning!"

Stephen looked at her with level disapproving eyes--at her slender form in its perfectly fitting tailored gown; at her patent shoes, so obviously unsuitable for her surroundings, and at the faint vision of silk stockings.

"If I might say so without appearing inhospitable," he remarked, with faint sarcasm, "this would seem to be the fitting moment for your departure. A closer examination of our rough life up here might alter your views."

She turned toward John, and caught the deprecating glance which flashed from him to Stephen.

"Your brother is making fun of me," she declared. "He looks at me and judges me just as I believe he would judge most people--sternly and without mercy. After all, you know, even though I am a daughter of the cities, there is another point of view--ours. Can you not believe that the call which prompts men and women to do the things in life which are really worth while is heard as often amid the hubbub of the city as in the solitude of these austere hills?"

"The question is a bootless one," Stephen answered firmly. "The city calls to its own, as the country holds its children, and both do best in their own environment. Like to like, and each bird to his own nest. You would be as much out of place here with us, madam, as my brother and I on the pavements of your city."

"You may be right," she admitted, "yet you dismiss one of the greatest questions in life with a single turn of your tongue. It is given to no one to be infallible. It is even possible that you may be wrong."

"It is possible," Stephen agreed grimly.

"The things in life which are worth while," she continued, looking down into the valley, "are common to all. They do not consist of one thing for one man, another for another. To whom comes the greater share of them--the dweller in the city, or you in your primitive and patriarchal life? You rest your brains, you make the seasons feed you, you work enough to keep your muscles firm, and nature does the rest. She brings the food to your doors, and when your harvest is over your work is done.

There are possibilities of rust here, Mr. Strangewey!"

Stephen's smile was almost disdainful.

"Madam," he declared, "you have six or seven million people in London.

How many of them live by really creative and honorable work? How many are there of polyglot race--Hebrews, Germans, foreigners of every type, preying upon one another, making false incomes which exist only on paper, living in false luxury, tasting false joys? The sign-post of our lives must be our personal inclinations. Our inclinations--my brother's inclinations and mine--lead us, as they have led my people for hundreds of years, to seek the cleaner things in life and the simpler forms of happiness. If I do not have the pleasure, madam, of seeing you again, permit me to wish you farewell."

He turned and walked away. Louise watched him with very real interest.

"Do you know," she said to John, "there is something which I can only describe as biblical about your brother, something a little like the prophets of the Old Testament, in the way he sees only one issue and clings to it. Are you, too, of his way of thinking?"

"Up to a certain point, I believe I am," he confessed. "I do not think I could ever have lived in the city. I do not think I could ever have been happy in any of the professions."

"Certainly I could not imagine you as a stock-broker or a lawyer. I feel it hard to realize you in any of the ordinary walks of life. Still, you know, the greatest question of all remains unanswered. Are you content just to live and flourish and die? Are there no compelling obligations with which one is born? Do you never feel cramped--in your mind, I mean?--feel that you want to push your way through the clouds into some other life?"

"I feel nearer the clouds here," he answered simply.

"I suppose you are sure of content--that is to say, if you can keep free from doubts. Still, there is the fighting instinct, you know; the craving for action. Don't you feel that sometimes?"

"Perhaps," he admitted.

They were leaving the churchyard now. She paused abruptly, pointing to a single grave in a part of the churchyard which seemed detached from the rest.

"Whose grave is that?" she inquired.

He hesitated.

"It is the grave of a young girl," he told her quietly.

"But why is she buried so far off, and all alone?" Louise persisted.

"She was the daughter of one of our shepherds," he replied. "She went into service at Carlisle, and returned here with a child. They are both buried there."

"Because of that her grave is apart from the others?"

"Yes," he answered. "It is very seldom, I am glad to say, that anything of the sort happens among us."

For the second time that morning Louise was conscious of an unexpected upheaval of emotion. She felt that the suns.h.i.+ne had gone, that the whole sweetness of the place had suddenly pa.s.sed away. The charm of its simple austerity had perished.

"And I thought I had found paradise!" she cried.

She moved quickly from John Strangewey's side. Before he could realize her intention, she had stepped over the low dividing wall and was on her knees by the side of the plain, neglected grave. She tore out the spray of apple-blossom which she had thrust into the bosom of her gown, and placed it reverently at the head of the little mound. For a moment her eyes drooped and her lips moved--she herself scarcely knew whether it was in prayer. Then she turned and came slowly back to her companion.

Something had gone, too, from his charm. She saw in him now nothing but the coming dourness of his brother. Her heart was still heavy. She s.h.i.+vered a little.

"Come," she said, "let us go back!"

They commenced the steep descent in silence. Every now and then John held his companion by the arm to steady her somewhat uncertain footsteps. It was he at last who spoke.

"Will you tell me, please, what is the matter with you, and why you placed that sprig of apple-blossom where you did?"

His tone woke her from her lethargy. She was a little surprised at its poignant, almost challenging note.

"Certainly," she replied. "I placed it there as a woman's protest against the injustice of that isolation."

"I deny that it is unjust."

She turned around and waved her hand toward the little gray building.

"The Savior to whom your church is dedicated thought otherwise," she reminded him. "Do you play at being lords paramount here over the souls and bodies of your serfs?"

"You judge without knowledge of the facts," he a.s.sured her calmly. "The girl could have lived here happily and been married to a respectable young man. She chose, instead, a wandering life. She chose, further, to make it a disreputable one. She broke her mother's heart and soured her father's latter years. She brought into the world a nameless child."

Louise's footsteps slackened.

"You men," she sighed, "are all alike! You judge only by what happens.

You never look inside. That is why your justice is so different from a woman's. All that you have told me is very pitiful, but there is another view of the case which you should consider. Let us sit down upon this boulder for a few moments. There is something that I should like to say to you before I go."

They sat upon a ledge of rock. Below them was the house, with its walled garden and the blossom-laden orchard. Beyond stretched the moorland, brilliant with patches of yellow gorse, and the hills, blue and melting in the morning sunlight.

"Don't you men sometimes realize," she continued earnestly, "the many, many guises in which temptation may come to a woman, especially to the young girl so far from home? She may be very lonely, and she may care; and if she cares, it is so hard to refuse the man she loves. The very sweetness, the very generosity of a woman's nature prompts her to give, give, give all the time. There are other women, similarly circ.u.mstanced, who think only of themselves, of their own safety and happiness, and they escape the danger; but are they to be praised and respected, while she that yields is condemned and cast out? I feel that you are not going to agree with me, and I do not wish to argue with you; but what I so pa.s.sionately object to is the sweeping judgment you make--the sheep on one side and the goats on the other. That is how man judges; G.o.d looks further. Every case is different. The law by which one should be judged may be poor justice for another."

She glanced at him almost appealingly, but there was no sign of yielding in his face.

"Laws," he reminded her, "are made for the benefit of the whole human race. Sometimes an individual may suffer for the benefit of others. That is inevitable."

"And so let the subject pa.s.s," she concluded, "but it saddens me to think that one of the great sorrows of the world should be there like a monument to spoil the wonder of this morning. Now I am going to ask you a question. Are you the John Strangewey who has recently had a fortune left to him?"