Paul was well provided with funds, but as a tribute to his abandoned avocation he resolved to work his way to America. Through his dealings with exporters in Alexandria he obtained, after a short period of waiting, a berth as substitute officer on an oil tank bound for New York.
Thence, after calling on Gritty Kestrell, who was in the throes of rehearsals for Krauss's summer production, he proceeded to Boston, crossed by boat to Yarmouth, and made his way to Hale's Turning in an ambling train whose old-fashioned lamps and yellow plush seats called forth a legion of forgotten associations.
Schooners in muddy creeks, glimpses of the sparkling Bay of Fundy, white-washed wooden houses and red barns, trees heavy with green apples, stations with their quotas of staring, gaping, hard-voiced villagers and canopied carriages, broad dusty roads shaded by maples, the compactness of the turf, the carpets of clover, daisies, buttercups and dandelions, the cobalt blue of the sky, the cotton-white of the clouds, the leisurely pastoral quality of the whole passing scene, caused him an exquisite pain. As he drew nearer to his destination—the squalling sticky-handed children, the smell of oranges!—his throat grew dry and he caught himself biting his nails in nervous agitation. He longed to see his home, could scarcely wait—yet dreaded it, dreaded it. He felt shy.
It was the first of July, 1914—Dominion Day—and all along the road were signs of celebration. Houses were decorated with flags, families from outlying districts thronged the streets of the villages in festive attire. Paud had an indulgent smile for the cow-hide boots emerging beneath muslin frocks, up in front and down at the back after the manner of soil-tilling women the world over. Kind-faced, shapeless mothers carried picnic baskets on their arms and solid unbrellas, and fat boys in duck knickers, with hat elastics under their chins, blew gaudy horns, sucking peppermint sticks between fanfares.
Paul thought of the days when he awoke at dawn, excited at the prospect of marching in the First of July parade. He saw no sign of the "brownies" and burnt-cork "minstrels" who had been a conspicuous feature of former parades, and a lamentable modern touch was added by the prevalence of Ford motor-cars, of which the world had been innocent in his childhood.
A poignant sense of his foreignness was borne in on him. When he had to consult the conductor, whom he unthinkingly addressed as "Guard," he felt as though they spoke different languages. Certainly the conductor scrutinized him as something out of the ordinary in passengers.
To cast off his depression Paul tried to think himself back into his childish state of mind, only to be faced with the truth that he had been a stranger even as a boy. He was suffused by the familiar sense of being in the wrong, of being unlike his school-mates, of being in the same camp as Aunt Verona, who was condemned as anti-social.
His school-mates! He wondered how many were still in Hale's Turning, and how many would remember him, even by name.
When the train drew up, he timidly scanned the figures on the platform, and his heart leaped as he recognized two or three which had long been consigned to oblivion. In a distant group was a man who squinted; with a shudder of compunction Paul recognized Bean-Oh, whose eye he had damaged with his umbrella, twenty years since. And there, walking down the platform with a mail bag on his bent, green shoulders, was old Silas, the postmaster—spitting tobacco juice at regular intervals. Old Silas who kept a shop where Paul and Walter Dreer had spent their weekly allowance on chocolate "dudes" and liquorice whips, old Silas who had pumped the organ in the days before Dr. Wilcove had persuaded the congregation to install water power, old Silas who had seemed venerable and hoary thirteen years ago, but who couldn't be more than sixty even now! Paul stood beside his hand-bags, and the postmaster moved on without a hint of recognition in his watery eyes.
A lanky fellow, in overalls, "one of the Wigginses," to judge by a generalized family likeness, was standing beside an empty cart.
"Can you take these bags and my trunks to the hotel for me?" Paul asked.
"What hotel?"
"Mr. Fraser's," Paul replied. The name came to him along with the familiar sights and smells. "I didn't know there was any other."
"Cance Fraser's been dead two year," said the youth in a tone which made Paul feel the weight of his ignorance.
"Then what's happened to the hotel?"
"Nothin.' Only Fred Matthews runs it now. Stayin' long, Mister?"
"I haven't decided yet."
"What you sellin'—books?"
"No." Paul resented the familiarity, though he recognized in it a token of respect. The yokel's way of showing approval was to ask personal questions. "I'll walk ahead, if you'll bring the luggage." He turned down a broad road into the village, avoiding the eyes of passersby. It was late afternoon and he felt he could not face his townsmen until twilight had fallen. He needed an hour or two behind closed doors to get used to being at home.
At the hotel, which was merely an overgrown private dwelling, Paul signed the register as "P. W. Minas." The name evoked no sign of interest on the part of his landlord, who seemed bored at the necessity of attending to a guest. Paul realized that, for the first time in his life, he was being incuriously taken for granted "as one of them Minases from Bridgetown way," and he mounted the stairs to his linoleum carpeted room with a whimsical sense of anticlimax. He had, he mused, a positive genius for anticlimax.
Dinner turned out to be a humble early meal called "supper," which he ate in solitude. He had washed off the grime of his travels and, for the sake of comfort, changed into a tweed sport suit. Daylight still lingered as he left the broad veranda of the hotel and passed through the gate into Prince William Road, which stretched up the hill under a luxuriant roof of maples toward an orange and scarlet sky.
Avoiding the knot of people before the combined post office, barber shop and town hall, he walked slowly along a footpath overrun with clover. At the widely-separated gates, bushes of syringa, laden with cream-coloured blossoms, gave forth a sweet, heavy perfume. Amongst the grass he detected long-forgotten flowers, nameless purple clusters which Gritty, with her melodramatic imagination, had once sworn were "poison," and a little yellow and orange blossom which they had called "butter and eggs." There was also a vague scent of strawberries, wholesomely exotic in nostrils attuned to tropical gardens.
A black dog, scandalized by Paul's English tweeds, came running out to protest against his existence, and Paul could only concur, which sent the dog away in snorting disgust. The faces of the small girl and boy who admonished him with unheeded orders of "Lie down, Smut," were dimly familiar. Finally he placed them as "some of the Hornbys." Perhaps Miss Hornby had got married and "had" them!
His heart beat fast and his hands grew cold as he approached the end of the road. Then suddenly it stood before him: a square house, sadly in need of repair, set far back in an unkempt garden. A sentinel elm—the one in which his kite had fouled—had been struck by lightning, and a dead bough hung, half severed. Tears blurred his sight, but consternation dried them. For this house was almost little, and for thirteen years he had thought of it as "Aunt Verona's big, bare house." Bare it most assuredly was—but, oh, pitifully, not big!
Only one tiger lily was left to bear witness to the old profusion, and long grass grew to the very walls. Windows were boarded up, fences half rotted.
He walked to the side of the house and was surprised to see a neat pile of cordwood and other signs of habitation. The face of a woman whom he recognized as the village yeastmaker appeared at the kitchen window.
He knocked and learned that Mrs. Barker was employed to live in two rooms as caretaker for the owner, who was in foreign parts.
"Paul Minas?" he suggested, and she agreed that that was "the party."
"Did Dr. Wilcove place you in charge?" he asked.
"No. I come after the doctor died. The other trustee, Mr. Kingsley—he lives in Halifax—come down to fix it all up."
So Dr. Wilcove was dead. Paul was saddened at this news, for he had looked forward to paying off his long moral obligation to the guardian whom he had ignored. He had also looked forward to asking Dr. Wilcove numerous questions about Aunt Verona—questions that hadn't occurred to him as a boy. He stood ruminating, as Mrs. Barker held the door half open, with an air of distrust mingled with deference and curiosity
Paul couldn't leave without having entered the house. "I'm Paul Minas," he announced. "Don't you remember me, Mrs. Barker? Miss Windell used to send me to buy yeast from you."
She was startled, then gave a cry of recognition. "Glory be! Why, if you ain't the very dead spit of old Captain Andrew! Well I never! And me takin' you for a summer visitor from Boston."
She invited him in, and he sat for a while in the old kitchen, ruined for him by Mrs. Barker's fussy attempts to make it comfortable. She was the sort of body who saved newspapers and bits of string in case they might "come in handy," which they didn't. And she adorned every object with knitted woollen mats or bows of "baby-ribbon."
It was the first time he had set foot within the kitchen since Aunt Verona had left it, and he felt her loss more poignantly now than he had done in the beginning. Life in Hale's Turning without Aunt Verona to interpret it was like music played on a dumb clavier.
"Nobody could find out where you was," Mrs. Barker finally explained. "Some said you was dead. So they decided to store all the stuff in the parlour and dining-room. I make a fire in there every off and on and keep it dusted. The roof's bad, and the chimneys ain't up to much."
Paul was bitterly disappointed. He had unreasonably counted on finding his bedroom walls adorned with the old prints of Queen Victoria and Sir John Macdonald. He craved the musty smell of the rag barrel and the box of lump sugar in the attic. Even the playroom was desecrated. The piano had been moved out to make room for Mrs. Barker's bed.
He walked away from the house, turning up the road. Mr. Kestrell's windmill creaked faintly in response to the evening breeze, and a light shone at the kitchen window. He had a desire to run in and greet the mother of the famous star—but refrained. He must make a complete tour of the village before paying calls.
The schoolyard showed traces of the "programme of athletic sports," and the "greased pig contest" that had been held there in the afternoon. Peanut shells and empty popcorn packets abounded. Eager children were already beginning to gather for "the grand fireworks display." As he passed he heard one urchin whisper: "Hey, skinny, look at the dude!" He was amused to learn that the supply of young "skinnies" had not given out. He presumed there were still "fatties," and "Scotties," and "shrimps."
A dusty motor-car in front of Walter's gate bore witness to the continued prosperity of the Dreers. The dark-red Ashmill house far beyond the hedge of rusty cedars was provincially august.
Finally the Baptist church, wooden, whitewashed. Its spire had once appeared to him the loftiest point in the world! He walked up the gravel avenue. A branch of an old acacia tree still brushed the window next to the Meddar pew. In imagination, he could smell the stale odour of leather-bound hymnbooks and red rep cushions, could hear the thud of the organ lid as he pushed it over the keys, the muffled rush of air as old Silas turned on the water power. He could even remember the numbers of some of the hymns: 103, "Crown Him"; 99, "When He Cometh!" Gee-rusalem!
As he turned into the road again from the churchyard, which smelt unmistakably of trampled strawberries, he saw a white-clad figure coming down the hill. It was a woman of fifty odd, slender, neat, a little dowdy, but exuding an air of timid allégresse that appealed to him. He would have recognized her had he met her in Zanzibar, for she had not changed, except to grow dryer. She was imperishable. One day a wind would, tout simplement, bear her away out of life, and she would primly draw down her skirts as she soared. She might have been made of tissue-paper. He took off his cap and stood barring the way, and she looked up, myopically, with a blush mantling her faded cheeks. She scarcely came up to his shoulder, and he remembered a Sunday morning when she had had to kneel down to knot his plaid Windsor tie for him.
"You don't recognize me, I'm afraid, Miss Todd."
She narrowed her eyes with diffident deliberation, then said: "No, I'm afraid I don't seem to."
"Of course," Paul sympathized. "On Dominion Day one sees such quantities of strangers."
"My memory is bad, I fear."
"Oh, don't say that. For if you fail to remember me I'll run away again and die of grief. And we were such good friends once. I had a habit of playing your accompaniments too fast, but you were very sweet about it."
Miss Todd stepped back, hesitated, then broke out, "You're never little Paul Minas."
"No—big Paul." To prove it he lifted her, kissed her gently and set her on her feet again.
Gurgling Gertrude was speechless, then voluble, and Paul stood answering her questions for several minutes. He found it more difficult to give an account of himself than he had anticipated, for nothing he might say could explain to Miss Todd how he had acquired the finish which, as he could see, stamped him in her eyes as high-toned to a degree. That she approved of him was evident from her way of saying:
"Well, I always declared you'd grow up a perfect wonder."
In reply to his inquiries Miss Todd informed him, with becoming modesty, but undisguised elation, that she hadn't missed a day at Sunday School for fifteen years. She had been presented with a red-letter Bible in token of her faithfulness.
"Good God!" exclaimed Paul, then caught himself. The "swear word" had slipped out despite his instinctive effort to attune himself to the piety and sobriety of his surroundings. More than ever he realized the force of Aunt Verona's admonition.
She suggested that he should accompany her to Mrs. Dreer's where there was to be a "party," but he excused himself, agreeing to call on Miss Todd the next afternoon and "stay to supper."
"What hot weather we're having!" she remarked as they parted. She would have been horrified on arriving at Mrs. Dreer's to think that she had forgotten this evidence of savoir-faire.
"Yes," he agreed. "But if you're used to living in the East, the heat is rather pleasant." By "East" he meant "The Orient," and after saying it he realized that for Miss Todd "East" connoted "The Maritime provinces." Already he had found that his mode of thinking, as well as his vocabulary, would have to be overhauled for navigation in these backwaters of civilization.
Miss Todd bowed and smiled, then walked on, a shade more primly, a shade more tremulously, but with an ineffable and appealing jauntiness. She was still wearing her Jubilee sovereign.
The village was re-awakening for the evening festivities. Farmers in for the day were removing nose-bags from horses' heads, whilst their wives tucked baskets into the clumsy waggons. To avoid them, Paul walked towards the marshes, crossed the trestle and made his way to the waterside. Ravaged by the ardours of the July sun, the sky was drawing blue veils across its pallid face. At the deserted shipyard, which presumably belonged to him, Paul sat on a broken keel and gazed across the river towards the mill.
Not a vessel was in port, though a clumsy tug, taking advantage of the tide from the Basin, was puffing her way around the bend with two empty white scows to be laden with gypsum. Poor little mud-red river, in which his forefathers had cast anchor on portentous arrivals from Saint Nazaire, Cienfuegos, Rotterdam, Madras. They had all "sold their farms to go to sea," and for their pains had died of yellow fever, or foundered, or become obliterated in far ends of the earth. Like himself that ghostly legion had been familiar with forepeaks and caustic, scraping irons and oakum, lime juice, salt "horse," and icy shrouds that rattled to the macabre tune of Atlantic gales. From them he had inherited a dauntlessness of spirit, a need to navigate the bounding main of thought and feeling, a hatred of staying put. But from vague sources that had persisted from the days when Nova Scotia was Acadie, a fraction of what Voltaire disdainfully called (and it was rather a gaffe) quelques arpents de neige, he had inherited traits of a different order. To him, as to Aunt Verona, had been bequeathed artistic heirlooms, and he was at times chilled with the fear that he had inherited a share of the fatalism that had blighted his aunt's career.
From the keel on which he was mounted he could see in the clear air of gathering night a sharp silhouette of Evangeline's Blomidon, and it was an easy boat-run to the beach on which the sentimental lovers were separated. His French ancestor, though dispossessed, had returned—for what? To be disillusioned, as usual. He sat musing until it was dark, then made his way stumblingly toward the abandoned wharf.
Near the overhanging bluff, after a sharp ascent, he came opposite the cottage of Phœbe Meddar. He walked around it from a safe distance, as he had done eighteen years before, when his inamorata lay mortally ill of an overindulgence in cucumbers and milk.
Some one was coming out of the cottage, and he turned away, striking out across the fields towards the village.
In his cheerless lodging he was unable to compose himself for sleep. After a vain attempt to read, he rose and paced the room. Finally he sat down, with some vague notion of writing to Pat Coyle. Loneliness pressed him with hard knuckles. He longed to pour himself out, and there was no human being in whom he could entirely confide. He acknowledged now—now that he had come a journey of many thousand miles—that he was basing high hopes on Phœbe Meddar. He acknowledged it, and in the same breath upbraided himself for his folly. It was an expedition as hare-brained as a search for buried treasure.
He longed to see Phœbe, yet feared the encounter. For a moment he had a wild plan of rehearsing her in the romantic attitude he expected of her—if he could only have done it anonymously! He wanted to write, "Do, please, be imaginative enough to rise to the occasion. Do understand that Paul Minas is a quixotic creature with a highly intellectualized sentimentalism, that he has chosen you—you on the strength of old, tenuous associations—as the embodiment of a hundred indeterminate desires. So, don't for goodness' sake be commonplace—or at least, don't let your inevitable human commonplaceness obtrude too bluntly. Don't stab his illusions; let them die of inanition if you must. Do, in short, understand him. He knows you can't really—nobody can, not even himself; he knows it, he knows it—but for the love of heaven, try, oh, try!"
Then he called himself an idiot, threw down his pen, and undressed. His thoughts were still revolving about Phœbe, and as he extinguished the lamp, the words of an old ditty came into his head:
Je n'ai plus de feu.
Ouvre-mot ta porte,
Pour l'amour de Dieu."
That was it: Phœbe must give him a new light on himself, must help him discover his destiny. For he was still obsessed with the idea that he had a message for the world, even a sermon to preach. So far, like Aunt Verona, he had merely collected texts; it was time to sort them and make a synthesis.
From his window he saw rockets careening into the sky over the tree-tops. The village had trooped en masse to the school-yard, to enjoy its annual fête. By this time his arrival was known. Mrs. Barker and Miss Todd would have seen to that. Perhaps Phœbe knew. She would be certain to take an interest—if only by reason of the dearth of interests in Hale's Turning. On that thought his mind fastened and reposed.
For a month Paul was occupied in carrying out repairs on his house. Like a self-respecting ex-second-mate he mixed the paint himself, and even wielded a brush when he could spare the time. He had conferred in Halifax with Mr. Kingsley, the lawyer, who, after administering a well-merited scolding, had handed over to him deeds and securities which placed him—from the Hale's Turning point of view—in the class of the well-to-do.
Although reinstatement in his native land had been accompanied by sharp disillusionment, although the people seemed ignorant and their aims petty, although Hale's Turning was little more to him than a plot of ground surrounding Aunt Verona's grave, nevertheless Paul derived a strange satisfaction from being at home. For the first time in his life he could review himself from a trustworthy angle. From his present self to the boy of twelve the lines converged in a perspective that gave a definite proportion to all his deeds. He saw in his tortuous development an instinctive plan of which he had not been clearly conscious during the process of developing. When he contrasted it with that of his former mates, he felt more than consoled for the loneliness and doubt of the intervening years. But satisfaction in his own accomplishment was tinged with bitterness. Why should one have attuned oneself to superfine reactions when life was preponderantly uncouth? Like a racehorse he could easily score on points, but not on utility; the world needed cart-horses.
Re-union with his schoolmates revived aches which he had lived down, reminded him of days when he had stood with a bat in his hand, despite his hatred of organized sports, in the hope that by hitting an exasperating ball he might win from some playmate a reciprocal show of interest in his mental games—an interest which had not been forthcoming. He acutely remembered the jeers that had greeted his failure to hit the ball, his sense of humiliation, his dread of being always in the wrong. And in the interval, how many, many times had the situation been re-echoed!
For twenty years he had manufactured anæsthetics to deaden the smarts caused by disregard of senses raw and exposed.
Walter Dreer—not Mark Laval—John Ashmill, Wilfrid Fraser, Skinny Wiggins had found the world laid out for them. Their pastimes and professions were at hand like their clean shirts and stockings. Like the children of the grenadier's song, each had been "born into this world alive, either a little Liberal, or else a little Conservative." Paul had been born heir to an "obstinate questioning of sense and outward things." His most familiar sensation was still that of yearning; his only means of making up to himself what the world failed to provide had been to strengthen his self-reliance. He had come to rely solely on the dictum: "Have faith in yourself and nothing can prevail against you."
His first taste of self-vindication had come to him on the day at Port Said when he had wandered away over the sands instead of rejoining his ship. His first taste of real security came in the succeeding years, when, remote from every companion of his youth, he had discovered that he was nearly impervious to further incomprehension, indifferent to public opinion. It was an unsocial and perhaps unnatural kind of security, for one of its ingredients was disdain; but more natural kinds had eluded him; every attempt to identify himself with the world—schools, musical institutions, marine disciplines—had been ill-fated.
As a child he had judged himself abnormally weak. As a man he found himself in abnormal ways strong, the strongest personage he knew, except for artists and thinkers, whom he knew only through their expression. If he were, after all, strong, why couldn't he, too, like artists and thinkers, express himself, and thus patiently reduce the emotional havoc wrought by years of disproportion. It had been humiliating to slave in ships for enough to eat; but no one had been able to impair his integrity by so much as a finger-mark. The world he had envisaged as a pack of wolves which barely tolerated him when he howled his feeble quota in their interest and which were prepared to devour him if he took off his uncomfortable wolf's clothing; a mob which indulged in meaningless squabbles outside the walls of his stronghold. He had long since become a hermit in order to survive and now he found himself more isolated than ever. Bon! The world should see what a thorough-going hermit he could be.
Walter Dreer, who was cashier in the Bridgetown bank, had begun by hailing him as a priceless acquisition to the life of the community. But when Paul had failed to find satisfaction in the bucolic merriment of evening parties at which Walter was the scintillating jeune premier, Walter's attitude became resentful. Through the inevitable roundabout channels Paul learned that his old chum spoke of him as "a smart-Alec." This criticism was weakened by the fact, obvious to the village at large, that Walter aped him.
John Ashmill, his former oppressor, was more satisfactory. John's very grossness gave him a tolerance which approximated breadth of vision. He had gone into the lumber business with his father, and in hours of leisure his sole ambition was to be entertained. From far and near he collected cronies whom Hale's Turning considered "fast." He had disgraced his people by eloping with Bessie Day, a girl whom Paul still regarded as dirty and bold. The pair lived in a house on the hill above the Baptist Church, played cards, drank and danced. They had even been known to engage in these pastimes on Sundays, and Miss Todd, over her garden fence, had seen Bessie smoking! When Paul, according to clamorous invitations, accompanied John and Bessie to Halifax on a riotous week-end excursion, he was voted, by members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, "Not so nice as he seemed."
Wilfrid Fraser, a good young man who had become a Master of Arts and was wavering between a natural bent for school-teaching and an urge to "go in for law," giggled at Paul's most serious remarks, for he had been told Paul had a sense of humour.
Skinny Wiggins, whose profession was uncertain but who disappeared at intervals to "work on a tug," addressed Paul with a casualness that was meant to cloak honest stupefaction. For Skinny, Paul's transformation into a man who could dominate him with smiles, swift speech and even, as he suspected, muscle, was in the category of things unfathomable. In the end Skinny took to passing him with a nod, his hands thrust into his pockets, his cap over his eye, his cheek filled with chewing tobacco.
Mark Laval was the greatest disappointment. Throughout his youth Paul had thought of the French lad as a genius. He had looked forward with intense curiosity to seeing what Mark had made of himself. On his second day at home he met Mark at the post office, and it was evident his drunken father had made good the promise to "kick all the nonsense out of him." There were even signs that he had taught his son the delights of the bottle. Mark was down from camp with a split finger. He had grown into a giant. It was easy to see that he had never worn a presentable suit of clothes nor come under any refining personal influence. On recognizing Paul, however, his remarkable eyes gave forth a reflection of the wistful enthusiasm of former days. Not once did he complain of the ill fortune that had denied him an education, a home, a hundred desired boons, yet every vibration of his voice and every gesture proclaimed a brutalized, murdered longing for opportunities to discipline the creative forces that had welled up in him. It was with genuine reluctance that Paul, after a half hour's conversation, concluded that Mark's failure was due to absence of organizing ability. There was no lack of detonating material; simply there was no gun.
"You was always a smart little feller," said Mark, as they were parting. "I knowed you was a wonder—and so y'are."
And so he was. A wonder even to himself! And all they could do was to let him go on being a wonder and go on wondering about it.
He completed the renovation of his house, labouring with a new determination. The profane world had failed him; he had in self-defence retired into his own. He must abide by the consequences, Better, at any rate, to be an intelligent hermit than a sheep—especially in the light of all this war-talk.
The Halifax Herald had reported diplomatic embroilments abroad, but Paul was not interested. Like most sailors he had not acquired a taste for newspapers. Ever since the days when he had argued with Otto, he had regarded everything connected with war as a misapplication of energy. War? Why, it was a phenomenon he had discussed out of countenance with army officers in Egypt and cast off as an antiquated institution, a thing to be placed in a museum beside the mummies.
But it had gone to the heads of the people like rum.
John Ashmill was going to enlist, in spite of old Dave's protests. At the age of twenty-seven John had outgrown every other form of excitement.
In Halifax, when Paul went to buy furniture for his house, men jumped upon soap-boxes and ranted, Never had the world seemed so colossally bad-mannered. Never had the walls of his fortress been so aimlessly battered; never had it seemed so impregnable.
There was a "mass meeting" in the town hall of Hale's Turning—a bare room over the post office where Paul had been wont to play Clementi sonatinas at school concerts. He left in the middle of the first speech and wandered up the road towards his deserted house, carrying away two impressions: the image of a red-faced speaker, Mr. Dreer, who gave "facts" about Germany which were phantastically inaccurate, and a face for which he had been on the lookout. Phœbe Meddar had returned from her summer vacation, and he had seen her as he passed down the aisle. To his kindling interest she had responded with a polite little bow. He had been prepared for disappointment on the score of beauty, of imagination, of intelligence, but not of taste. The Phœbe whom he had recognized in the motley gathering was undoubtedly pretty, imaginative, intelligent—but she was "ladylike"; conspicuously and provincially so, like Flora Ashmill and Miss Todd. He had wanted Phœbe to be natural—not boisterously natural like Gritty Kestrell, but sweetly and gently natural. Yet his disappointment was mitigated, for Phœbe had been as distinct from her neighbours as a flower from its leaves.
The phrases of the sensation-monger still rang in his ears as he entered the dark house. He resented Mr. Dreer as he had long ago resented the evangelist. Both endeavoured to convert by fair means or foul; both were vulgar.
Mrs. Barker had been installed as cook-housekeeper, with a bedroom upstairs, and the playroom had been restored to the dignity of music-room. Here Paul had placed the few Persian and Egyptian objects he had brought from Cairo. The piano was still a brave instrument. He lit candles and sat down to obliterate the vexatious mood. The sound ran across the floors and echoed in far-away corners of the house. During lulls he heard the rustling boughs of the cherry tree. The candles flickered gently to airs that came in from the orchard, and over his shoulder Paul saw his own shadow stretching eerily towards the blackboard on which he had been drawing a picture of a locomotive when Aunt Verona startled him with the strange word: "labyrinth."
That was life—a labyrinth, a never-ending spiral.
The rooms had been redecorated and Paul had begun to distribute the best pieces of Aunt Verona's furniture. Some had been removed to the woodshed whence they were to be transported to auction rooms in Bridgetown. On his way upstairs, he paused to rummage in drawers which had thus far escaped attention. In one he came on a lacquer box which seemed familiar, although he could not place it among his possessions. It was locked, and there was no key. Curiosity prompted him to force back the cover.
His eyes fell on a humble bunch of dried flowers: daisies, clovers, buttercups. He was puzzled A faint odour of coco-nut cookies gently assailed him and vanished. Then he remembered.
He closed the lid of the box and replaced it in the drawer. The girl of seven who had unconsciously set his emotions a-twitter for the first time and then succumbed to her dear little greediness had actually been the elder sister of the conspicuously ladylike young woman to whom he had bowed this very evening in the town hall. Perhaps, one day, he would bring Phœbe to his house to show her the box; its story could not fail to touch her.
As he undressed, the phrases of the speechmaker kept recurring. "A high duty to perform," "A sacred privilege to exercise," "An opportunity to devote oneself to a great cause."
What great cause? The cause of the herd that had made existence so difficult, against whose exquisite forms of oppression one had had the perseverance and ingenuity to render oneself proof? Not at all; it was the great cause, pardi! Nobody knew wherein the greatness lay; everybody was too passionately carried away by all this greatness to inquire!
A high duty to take part in a savage "free-for-all" and take it seriously! A sacred privilege to go back into a dusty stampede! The answer was a snort. The Bridgetown Quakers were as unsympathetic, in the mass, as their conscientiously belligerent brothers in the mass. No mob's programme could be his; that was the essence of his experience.
After getting into bed he heard a sound which he took to be a knock at the door. He was startled, listened tensely for a moment, and concluded it was the wind. Then he remembered he had left the playroom window open. He had meant to close it, for there was an encampment of gypsies outside the village. He lit a candle and went downstairs. A puff of air extinguished the light, and he felt his way across the playroom.
Something in the atmosphere made him uneasy. A trace of his old dread of the dark assailed him, and he stood, back to the window, exhorting his nerves. The restlessness only increased, and he started violently when Mrs. Barker's clock in the kitchen whirred, preparatory to striking the hour.
Its tones recalled the exotic chimes, and the solace which was ever associated with them came to his aid. He could make out the position of the piano, for a corner of the polished lid faintly gleamed. His attention was suddenly but calmly riveted on this glow, which, whilst he looked, became more and more diffused, till it seemed to outline a human figure.
Paul breathlessly waited.
The figure died away, and no glow was left to mark the position of the piano. For some moments he stood rigid, then turned and left the playroom, numb, exalted, reassured—armed as with an invisible coat of mail.