A Dozen Ways Of Love by Lily Dougall (lightweight ebook reader txt) 📕

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

'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 soael 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 soael then? Parson he says the soael'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 doaen'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.'

'Noae, 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 passed 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 passed 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 coarse 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 assured 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.


CHAPTER II

The man of science, Skelton by name, passed some seven days in business and pleasure at home among men of his own class, and then, impelled by an intolerable curiosity, he went to seek the home of the woman with whom he had so strange a meeting. Concerning the mad delusion from which he had suffered in her presence, his mind would give him no rest. Some further effort he must make to understand the cause of an experience which he could not reason from his memory. The effort might be futile; he could form no plan of action; yet he found himself again upon the highroad which led from the nearest station to the village of West Chilton.

The autumn leaf that had bedecked the trees was lying upon the ground, its brightness soiled and tarnished. The cloud rack hung above, a vault of gloom in which the upper winds coursed sadly.

'This is the field,' said Skelton within himself. 'The ploughman has finished his work, but the crows are still flapping about it. I wonder if they are the same crows! That is the clump of weeds by which she sat; it was as red as flame then, but now it is colourless as the cinders of a fire that is gone out.'

His words were like straws, showing the current of his thoughts.

Just then in the west the cloud masses in the horizon, being moved by the winds, rent asunder, exposing the land to the yellow blaze of the setting sun. The distant hills stood out against the glow in richer blue, and far and near the fields took brighter hues--warm brown of earth ready to yield the next harvest, yellow of stubble lands at rest, bright green of slopes that fed the moving cows. There were luminous shadows, too, that gathered instantly in the copses, as if they were the forms of dryads who could sport unseen in the murk daylight, but must fly under each shrub for refuge in the sudden sunshine. Close at his feet lay the patch of cabbages--purple cabbages they were, throwing back from each glossy leaf and stalk infinite gradations of crimson light. Parts of the leaves were not glossy but were covered with opaque bloom of tender blue, and here and there a leaf had been broken, disclosing scarlet veins. They were very beautiful--Skelton stood looking down into their depth of colour.

It had been difficult for him to conjecture a possible cause for the phantom he had thought he saw a week before, but one theory which had floated in his mind had been that from these cabbages, which had lain a trifle too long in sun and moisture; gases might have arisen which had disturbed his senses. It was true that his theory did not account for other instances of the same optical delusion to which the talk of the ploughman had seemed to point, but Skelton could not bring himself to attach much importance to his words. He meditated on them now as he stood.

'I dare not go to the young woman and ask her to show me her "shadder." If she knew I was here she would only try to defeat my purpose. I _can_ only interview her neighbours; and this first rustic whom I questioned shut himself up like an oyster; if all the rest act in this way, what can I do? And if I can hear all the vulgar superstition there is to be heard, will there be in the whole of it the indication of a single fact?'

So he mused by the road-side while the sun hung in the dream temple of fire made by the chasm of cloud. Then the earth moved onward into the night, and he walked on upon his curious errand.

The darkness of evening had already fallen, and he was still about a mile from the village when he discerned a woman coming towards him on the road. It was the very woman about whom his mind was occupied. There was a house at one side; the gate leading to it was close to him, and, not wishing to be recognised at the moment, he turned in through it to wait in the darkness of some garden shrubs till she had passed.

But she did not pass. She came up, walking more and more slowly, till she stood on the road outside the gate. She looked up and down the road with a hesitating air, and then, clasping her hands behind her, leaned back against a heavy gate-post and composed herself to wait. There was light enough to see her, for there was a moon behind the clouds, and also what was left of the daylight in