The Fire of Life

Front matter

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife, Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art ; I warmed both hands before the fire of life, It sinks and I am ready to depart. Landor. BY CHARLES KENNETT BURROW Author of "Asteck's Madowia" and " Tke Way of the Wind" LONDON DUCKWORTH & CO. 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. AU rights reserved Zo MY COUSIN WALTER BURROW CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. THE EVE OF DEPARTURE ... I II. SHOTTON CHURCH . . . .II III. BAYNE AND WARING ... 27 IV. FATHER AND DAUGHTER . . . 35 V. WARING'S CALL .... 43 VI. VICTOR GAUDET • • • • 53 VII. THE HORSE SHOW .... 62 VIIL THE HOMEWARD RIDE ... 74 IX. BRANSFORD IS CONFIDENTIAL . . 84 X. A FALL, AND OTHER MATTERS . . 98 XI. A QUESTION OF MARKET VALUE . . 115 XII. IN GAUDET-S COTTAGE . . . 130 XIII. MRS TORRANCE WRITES, AND WARING MAKES AN APPEAL . . . 138 XIV.

THE GOING OF GAUDET . . . I48 XV. THE SOUND OF MANY WATERS . . 160 XVI. NIGHT AND FEAR . . . .176 XVII. DRAYTON'S VIGIL . . . . 188 XVIII. TOWN AGAIN, AND A DINNER . . 195 CONTENTS VI 11 CHAP. PAGE XIX. GAUDET BEGINS TO SUSPECT . . 209 XX. FLIGHT . 218 XXI. WARING MAKES A SLIP . • 231 XXII. THE WOUNDED HEART . . . 245 XXIII. MRS TORRANCE WITHOUT THE MASK . 257 XXIV. DRAYTON HEARS BARE TRUTH . . 267 XXV. ANOTHER CLOSED DOOR . . . 273 XXVI. THE BEGINNING OF LIGHT . . . 286 XXVII. IN THE CHURCH .... 298 XXVIII. FULL DAWN ..... 310 XXIX. SOME BURNT PAPER, AND THE END .

Chapter I The Eve Of Departure

" So you are going to leave us, Mr Waring ? " Waring turned quickly. He had imagined him self in sole possession of the balcony ; the sound of his hostess's voice assured him that solitude there was impossible. " Yes, I'm going to leave you," he said. " But why do you put it in that way? My going can't make the least difference to you or anyone else. You won't even miss me." " You are ungenerous to yourself." " In most matters I am too generous to myself." " Candidly," Mrs Torrance went on, " it won't make much difference. But you interest me, Mr Waring, and I want to know why you leave town just as other people are coming into it." " If I may say it without offending you, — be cause other people are foolish, need I be foolish too ? " " I grant you that other people are nearly always fools."

" Pray don't think I set up for a wise man A In May and June I prefer country to town. Why should I stifle in London for no earthly reason ? As I was sitting here, getting cool, the fatuity of the whole thing made me laugh. We create a system, and then allow it to rule us." " But we are permitted to criticise it." " Oh, yes, quite ; but we never alter it." " We need an apostle — a missionary spirit. There you have an opportunity, Mr Waring." " I feel no call." Below, but at a considerable distance from the house, lay Kensington Gardens, the tree-tops swaying tranquilly under a placid moon. The air had life and fragrance in it ; that life and fragrance which often come as a sudden revela tion in a London street. It suggested the greener England, the healthier instincts, the less sedulous desire for change.

Waring, as he sat there, acknowledged to himself that he was happy ; but happy mainly because he was to escape from it all on the following day. He had an almost childish longing to be free, to wear old clothes, to let the sun play the lover with his skin. And as he was on the friendliest terms with Mrs Torrance, having, indeed, a very genuine affection for that generous, worldly, and most com panionable old lady, he told her freely what he thought. " All this," she said, " is very nice and pretty, but would it do for me, Mr Waring ? " " Certainly not." " And would it do for any woman you know ? " " You must give me time to think about that." " I know too much of the world," she said, " to say that all women are alike ; only knaves or idiots say that : but I do think you might spend all your life in trying to find one to agree with you, and die before you had touched her hand. ...

I thought you might have some stronger reason for going than any you have given me. I am a very old friend, Mr Waring, and I confess that I was fishing." " I assure you," he said, " that I've given you my true and only reason." " Then I believe you." He rose and offered her his arm. " You will catch cold," he said. " One more tour of your drawing-room, and I must be off. Remember, I go by the early train to-morrow, and have to pack : a poor man does his own packing. It makes his back ache, and it makes him cross ; but what matter ? His reward comes later." " You are a very nice boy," she said, " and I like you. Come to me if you are ever in any trouble. I am going to call you Ernest in future. Do you mind ? " He felt a quick, trustful tender ness for Mrs Torrance ; he bowed, and kissed her hand.

" You are too good to me," he said. Waring held aside the curtains to let Mrs Torrance pass into the room. The sudden buzz of voices and the heated air made him wish himself back in his solitary seat again ; but before he had time to question the meaning of this curious recurring instinct he was half-way across the floor. " Do you know that Ethel Barrington is here?" Mrs Torrance asked. " No," said Waring ; " where is she ? " " I can't point at her, my dear Ernest ; but if you look just to the right of my sweet Botticelli copy (the copy poor Esmond made for me, you remember), you will see her." Waring looked and saw her. Mrs Torrance moved away, and he crossed over and took a vacant chair at Miss Barrington's side. " I thought you were not here," she said. " I was on the balcony." " If I'd known I might have gone out to see you."

" What a pity you didn't know. But there's no reason in life why you shouldn't come now, if you'retired of the crush." " I am tired of it." " Then let me take you away." Mrs Torrance watched Waring calmly conduct ing Miss Barrington back to the balcony with amused interest. " It would never, never do," she thought, "but they match each other like hand and glove. And yet, he would be tired of her in a month." Waring leaned over the balcony railing. Miss Barrington disposed herself in the chair which he had left a few minutes before. The beginnings of a placid melancholy stole over Waring, the melancholy which one nurses as a luxury of the introspective sense. It had no clear connection with the house, with Mrs Torrance, with time or circumstance, or the girl near him. If he had inclined to define it at the moment, he would probably have set it down to the long shadows of the lamp-posts and the winking lights at the other side of the street.

" Aren't you going to talk to me, now that you've induced me to run the risk of a chill ? " " Did I induce you ? " " I should never have come out alone." " Well, to begin with, look at this beautiful per spective of street-lamps." She rose obediently, and leaned over the rail by Waring's side. " Do you see," he went on, " how they grow beautiful as they recede ? Just opposite they are only ugly, sophisticated lights at the top of cast iron posts ; but away there they seem to have the romance of stars." " Don't say," she said, " that that is like life — close at hand, sordid and mean, but at a distance charming and attractive. I believe you meant to draw such a parallel." Waring laughed. " Not I," he said. " I might have talked like that three years ago ; but we grow out of those fancies. Life is always beautiful, if you only go deep enough ; beautiful in its squalor and crime even."

" What's the matter with you to-night, Mr Waring ? I shall begin to think you are growing sententious. Of course, life is always beautiful." " I can understand that you think so." " Mrs Torrance tells me you are going away to-morrow," she said, quickly. " That is quite true," Waring said. " You are running away from the life you think so beautiful." " Yes ; to one more beautiful." " I half agree with you." " Ah, but that ' half ' makes all the difference." Almost unconsciously Waring lighted a cigarette, and instantly apologised. " You are very absent-minded to-night," said Miss Barrington, " but pray don't throw it away. I will treat you kindly, like a schoolboy on his last day at home. You may do exactly as you like." " Thanks," he said. " To tell you the truth I feel like a schoolboy, only a little too much grown up.

To-morrow, at this time, I shall be more than a hundred miles from here, I hope in some wayside inn. I shall have a great wooden bedstead, stuck in the middle of a quaint room, with impossible paper on the walls and a window about the size of a handkerchief. I shall get up cheerfully at eight o'clock — " " No ! " Miss Barrington interjected. " Yes — at eight o'clock. And I shall walk and walk until I find another inn, and so for days. To rest when one is tired — think of that ! " " And to forget your other life, and all the people who made it so boring to you ! " " You pretend to be unkind," Waring said. " Believe me I shall not forget you." He was still regarding the street below, still filled with mingled melancholy and contentment, still in a mood in which absolute candour alone was possible.

If he had been in love with the girl who was so close to him he would have told her so at once : but he was not in love with her ; he was not even in love with an ideal. He had reached that stage in a man's life when his ideals, if they exist at all, are resolved into his blood — to be lived, not thought. " How am I to know that you will not forget me, and all of us ? " she asked. " I give you my word," he said. " Besides, I shall often write to Mrs Torrance, and I shall always ask after you. I will make her promise to tell you if I fail." " That would only prove that you hadn't for gotten my name." " Dear me, are you so anxious that I should always think of you ? " " A woman never likes to be forgotten, even by her enemies." Waring dropped the end of his cigarette into the street, and looked as closely at Miss Barring ton as the doubtful moonlight would allow.

She was gazing steadfastly at the stars that swung above the house-tops; her neck and shoulders gleamed with a kind of hidden light under the moon ; her full lips, just parted, made no secret of their life. Her eyelids quivered slightly under the consciousness of his gaze. " Is it in the least likely," asked Waring, " that any man, having once seen you, could ever for get?" " It is easy," she said, " to say pretty things." " I always try to say only what I mean." " Even to women ? " she asked. " Most of all to women. If you doubt what I say I can only be sorry, I can do nothing more." Her hand, quite free of jewels, delicate, white, as it seemed, immaculate — a girl's hand, rested on the balcony. A boyish instinct, too virgin to be analysed, made him bow his head ; he touched her fingers with his lips.

At the contact it struck him oddly that he seemed to have entered upon a course of kissing ladies' hands that night. It also struck him, too late, that this hand was not like Mrs Torrance's. " You will forgive me, please," he said, " as a friend. You seemed to want some assurance that I was sincere." She did not move either hand or body at the touch. It was well that he did not realise that, at that moment, her lips might have been his as well. His pulse remained placid while hers shook. The ordinary positions were reversed ; she was fire to his unconscious equa nimity. But the fire showed no outward flame, and Waring remained happily oblivious, letting his thoughts precede him along the pleasant tracks, the sunny highways, which he destined for his feet. " When will you be back ? " she asked.

" In July or August, unless I grow tired before." " Oh, you won't grow tired." she said, a little scornfully. " I hope not," Waring answered. They went back to the drawing-room, where Waring wished his hostess and Miss Barrington goodbye. " Suppose I want to write to you, Ernest, where can I address a letter ? " Mrs Torrance asked. " To the Post Office at Bedminster, — I suppose there is a Post Office there ? I'm going into an unknown country, Mrs Torrance, full of all kinds of danger." " I hope you will learn wisdom there ; you need it." " Don't talk of wisdom yet ; wait till I'm old." " I'm old," said Mrs Torrance, "but you youngsters will never acknowledge my wisdom." " You," said Waring. " You are always young — one of my youngest friends." Waring walked to his rooms and set himself to pack.

His personal baggage was as meagre as a friar's, and easily stowed into a knapsack. The rest, which was to be sent on by rail to a friend's house in the wilds of Somerset, gave him infinite trouble. He had a man's inherent incapacity for packing, that incapacity which manifests itself in the careful selection of unnecessary ties and the total omission of shirts and socks. It was well past midnight before he sat down wearily to con template the ruin which his hands had wrought. Open and half-empty drawers, littered papers and unaccountable debris of all kinds filled his soul with desolation. He went to bed in the midst of it all and dreamed that he had embraced packing as a profession. Only the vaguest thoughts of Miss Barrington crossed his mind, and when they came they had not sufficient weight to make him open sleepy eyes.

Chapter II Shotton Church

To have a fixed destination, and that a pleasant one, yet not to be bound to reach it by any certain hour or minute, is one of the few un mixed joys of life. For it implies two things — that one is master of one's own time, and that punctuality has not assumed the false position of a virtue. Waring was not of those who spend their whole lives in precise attendance upon appointments, and who resent death mainly on the ground that it is unbusiness-like. He trudged happily along a hot west-country road with a delicious sense of irresponsibility. He had been walking westward for two days, and he judged, by the formation of the country, that the end of that stage of his journey must be near. To the right rose the green shoulder of a sloping down, on his left a thick wood made a double peace of shade and silence.

The road before him mounted slowly to what seemed the crest of a considerable hill, for beyond he saw nothing but blue sky and floating cloud. Such M wind as there was breathed rather than blew, a late May wind, indolent with conscious summer. " From this hill top," thought Waring, " I shall look down upon the promised land." But when he reached it there was a level stretch to traverse before the road dipped down into the valley. He had reached the summit of a long ridge of hills which dominates that portion of western England — a region of clean air and placid beauty, from which the eye ranges over fat fields and valleys to where the land breaks down into the Bristol Channel. A village, irregular and quaint, straggled over this eminence, and Waring lay down against a bank of deep grass to take it in.

He was a little tired, and to watch the place through half-closed eyelids was vaguely restful. The coolness of the long grass against his hands and body soothed and refreshed him ; the hawthorn blossom above his head diffused a fragrance as subtle as sleep. Most of the cottages lay well back from the road, and were guarded by narrow gardens, lavish of scent and colour. Avenues of hollyhocks led to the low doorways, and budding wistaria trailed about the eaves. The place shimmered in the heat, the white road blinked and shone, and the inn-sign, The Drayton Arms, hung motionless from its supports. Every now and then a girl, with clinking bucket, went up the road to a well, and returned with the water dripping unnoticed against her kilted skirts. The sound of voices or of laughter came at intervals through open door ways, and Waring told himself, with a fine sense of satisfaction, that he had journeyed wisely into a good and quiet land.

After half an hour's rest he drew a letter from his pocket. It bore the Bedminster postmark, and the superscription was in the wiry hand of Mrs Torrance. Waring read the letter through for the tenth time. " My dear Ernest," it ran, " you have started on what I suppose you call your tour, and I hope you're not sick of it already. It occurred to me after you had gone that I had a kind of cousin in that part of the world, a man called Drayton. I tell you candidly that I think the man's a fool, but he may interest you and perhaps be of service in proclaiming your social virtues to the neighbourhood. His wife is dead, but he has a child, and her I could find it in my old heart to love. Whatever you do, don't commit the indiscretion of praising me to him. If you do, he'll begin by distrusting, and probably end by hating you."

There was a postscript in which she said : " As I told you, I like you, and an old woman may be candid, particularly to a young man. I know you haven't too much money. Your father, my old friend Arthur Waring, never saved a penny he could spend, to my certain knowledge. But he was a fine gentleman and might have done worse. His marriage with a penniless girl was the best thing he ever did. It was fortunate that some of the property was tied up. What I am coming to is this — if you ever want any money ask me for it. I have few calls upon me, and am childless. Don't be too modest — only idiots are modest, and I don't want to think you one." Waring folded up the letter with the same look of amused wonder in his eyes as had crossed them when he first read it. He was not surprised, nothing that Mrs Torrance might do would have surprised him, but he was curiously unable to account for it.

The thought of Mrs Torrance's acute, kind, powdered old face (she atoned for the convention of the powder by the obvious uncon vention of its application) made him feel very tender towards her. At the moment he required no money — even if he had he would not have asked her for it — but the amazing generosity of the offer made him think better of the world. He rose, shook the dust from his clothes, and walked up the village street. Through the open door of the Drayton Arms he caught a glimpse of shining pewter, and low, black benches on an uneven floor. He accepted the invitation which these proffered, and went in. Two men sat at one of the benches, a quart tankard between them; the landlord dosed in a corner of his primitive bar. Waring secured bread, cheese, and ale, and sat down a few paces away from the two men. '"Ave 'ee shot anythin' lately, John?" asked one.

" 'Ees," said the other, " I got vower hrabbits yesterday ; but 'tis bad to shoot 'em now ; they be so vull o' young uns." " Thee cusn't live without a gun, John. It do meake prettier music than the anvil, don't it? 'Tis wull you ben't a-married, John — no 'ooman could put up wi' 'ee, in and out at all hours wi' thic girt gun. For sure, you never axed a maid to put up wi't." A slow smile broadened over Long John's face. It was a smile that slowly spread itself through his gaunt six feet three of bone until he shook with it. He buried his nose in the tankard and winked laboriously with one eye over the edge. " Who were it, then ? " asked the other, in a heavy whisper. " P'raps 'twer'n't nobody and p'raps 'twere," said Long John. " I ben't gwain to zay nothin'. You think what you'm minded." Waring broke into the pause that followed.

" Does anyone called Bayne live about here ? " he asked. " 'Ees, vor sure he do," said Long John. " He do bide at the Clock House, a girt vine pleace in Shotton parish." " Is it far from here ? " " 'Tmid be two mile and it mid be dree. Just walk straight along hroad and you'll zee the tower to the hright. Mr Bayne be a very good sort, zir." " He is a good sort," said Waring, " and if you don't mind we'll drink his health, and yours, at the same time." The landlord awoke by instinct, refilled the tankards, and drowsed off again. Long John and his companion drank with pro found appreciation. " You seem to know all about the country," said Waring, " perhaps you can tell me where Mr Drayton lives ? " " He do live a mile beyond our church, betwixt yere and Shotton." " Is he a good sort ? " P'raps you know un," said Long John " I've never seen him in my life."

The be ginnings of the smile broadened over the black smith's face, but he suppressed it on a kind of instinct of politeness, and it ebbed away in a strangled cough. " Wull," he said, " 'ee ben't a bad sort, so to speak, but main pecooliar." " 'Ees, pecooliar," said the other, as though he liked the word. "Mr Perrott do know un better than I," said Long John, waving a great gnarled hand to wards his companion, " Mr Perrott do work vor un." " I've a worked vor un, on and off, vor vifteen 'ear," said Mr Perrott, " and in that time 'e'eve a changed so's you 'ouldn't know un. 'E'eve a bin a good measter to me and I'll say no more." "Bravo!" said Waring. "That's right. I shall be staying about here for some time, so we shall meet again, Mr Perrott." Waring glanced enquiring at Long John, " Mr King's his name," said Perrott.

" We call un Long John ; 'ee do like it better." Long John nodded in a shame-faced way that was as attractive as a child's blush. Waring shook hands with both of them and went out. Long John's grasp had left his fingers white and numb. Waring turned his face towards Shotton parish, and went on in somewhat of a dream. He was conscious of a profound and curious happiness, a content born of good air, of steady walking, and of wholesome ale. He felt entirely irresponsible, and this, to a town dweller, habitually on the alert for flying hansoms and the snares of the streets, was to approach the cream of negative felicity. He had no ambition save to eat, and breathe, and talk. The healthy animal within him purred to itself ; he felt sleek of body and virile of blood. Shotton parish is a curious triangle of land, almost an equilateral triangle, and Shotton church is at the extreme northern angle.

It stands to the right of the road as you go south by west along that open highway, surrounded by a grave garth that is level with the top of the encircling B wall, so that to a passenger upon the road it seems that his noisy footsteps must beat at the ears of the silent populace. It is, indeed, a place where a man might choose to sleep, for there the sea-wind comes, tempered in its journey over fruitful orchards and quiet pastures, there the first daffodils break bud, there the shifting seasons pass in slow mutation above the narrow houses whose inmates are beyond the touch of change. Waring checked his footsteps, half in reverence and half in idleness, and leaned his elbows upon the moss-cushioned wall. The church, square towered and of the yellowish grey so common to that part of England, invited to repose and con templation ; a few jackdaws idly flopped about the pinnacles, and beyond the blue sky was slave to the sun.

For a moment he shut his eyes ; the luxury of living overpowered him. Presently his ear became aware of music, and a glance showed him that the church door was open. He hesitated for a moment, and made a motion towards his watch ; then, remembering that time no longer mattered to him, he turned in under the lych-gate and walked slowly up the worn path way. On either side of the porch were stone seats, curiously formed of old stone coffins ; Waring glanced at them as he passed, and won dered at the strange sense of utility which had set them there. He slipped softly through the door, and in an instant was free of the insistence of full sunlight, and in something of the coolness and shadow of a wood. And this impression of a wood remained after he had found a seat to suit his sense of comfort ; for from the organ loft came tremulous treble flut ings, little showers of sudden notes, slow and falling cadences.

It was as though a bird sang up there in the higher branches, and Waring had training enough to know that the fingers that touched the keys so lightly had mastery in them ; they not only touched, but felt the notes ; they lingered until lingering became genius ; they quickened until motion rose into flight. The Fates conspired at that point of time to put the boy's heart into Waring again — the boy's heart with the man's experience of the boy's broken illusions, and in the main he hardly regretted the illusions ; they were over, as the music would presently be over, as some day he himself would be over and done with, mingled with the dust. He smiled to himself, thinking of the perfect con tent of mind and body which gave such con templations the aspect of a friend. The music stopped. There was a bird-like stir and flutter, and the sound of a girl's voice, which was answered by a man's laugh — a quaint low laugh, a little tremulous.

Waring strained his eyes and ears. Then came the wail of the tuning of a violin, and then, gone almost before he realised it, the sight of a girl's face, framed in the dark red curtain of the organ loft. He had nothing but an impression of clear colour, the flushed whiteness of young flash, the flash of brown hair, the glow of the red cap that crowned it. There was no meeting of eyes, for the girl's face was in profile, but Waring felt that he already knew her eyes. The current of this not unsentimental traveller's thoughts was instantly changed. He no longer considered endings, but beginnings, the bud be came more lovely than the flower, the dawn than noon. He felt no desire ever to leave Shotton church ; it was commodious, it was cool, it was eminently quiet ; a man might live there very well, so long as the organ loft was tenanted.

Then the music began again. This time the violin took up its part ; the hand upon the organ was different. The performance was not so per fect as the first, but by a happy perversity Waring liked it better, because on that account it was more human. The element of human imperfec tion appeals irresistibly to experience ; it is only inexperience that hopes for flawlessness, and we may judge even that the saints preferred the com panionship of generous sinners to the serener company of their own elect. And so the summer without and the cool within, the music and the sober light, all com bined to bring a steady influence upon Waring, an influence he hardly understood ; a subtlety of accidents to make the past blurred and the future full of implicit hope. He hoped for nothing in particular ; it was a general hope, wide enough to include the world, and not narrow enough to ex clude himself.