Strange Gods. A novel

Front matter

STRANGE GODS. a Botiel. BY CONSTANCE COTTERELL. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL I. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, in Œrtunarg to get fMajcsto tl;c ©ucen. 1889. (All rights reserved.) CONTENTS OF VOL. I. - I. Of Wayside Meetings ... ... i II. Goose-grass and other Green Things 29 III. Tristram gets into Harness ... ... 65 IV. Sacred and Profane ... ... 84 V. Creeds and Conduct ... ... ... 107 VI. Cousins and Cousins ... ... 122 VII. Miss Sampson follows the New Trail 147 VIII. Of Picnicking ... ... ... 16S IX. And Forget-me-nots ... ... ... 178 X. "The Serpent beguiled me" ... 194 XI. "And I did eat" ... ... ... 214 XII. The Way of Transgressors ... 234 XIII. Under the Greenwood Tree ... ... A .violet opening from the bud, All in a little world of green ; With fragrance sweet, With beauty meet, Under its leafy screen.

The sun was high and bright and fair, But 0 the cloud that lay between ! A cloud that past In mist at last, And then the light was seen. Sweet flower that rose to meet the sun, Strong sun that gave it life : I ween They had their hour, Glad sun and flower, When all the world was green. George Cottekell. The devil one day, as he was sitting dozing just about where Lychminster Cathedral now stands, thrust out one hoof in a sleepy stretch, and pushed the ground along, causing the river, which is ten miles from Lychminster, to go at least half a mile out of its course. That was in very early times, when his talent was scarcely ripened, and men were few, and he had not much on his hands. But some time after, when he was grown so busy elsewhere that he had no leisure for siestas, Lychminster was built ; and later still, when he was more and more occupied, little Gablethorp came into being on the bank of the river, in the very bend that he had made.

The exact spot of ground where his hoof struck is, of course, that deep hollow half-way between Lychminster and Gablethorp. So, you see, the origin of Gablethorp is not buried in obscurity and mist, like the origin of so much else ; nothing could be clearer or more ) circumstantial. Some people even give dates, but I should not like to bind down so fine a gentleman to dates. If you have any doubts, go and see the bend in the river and the hollow, and judge for yourself. Gablethorp will not think much of you if you doubt after that. It is probable that this nap of the devil's has had great influence on Gablethorp. People naturally felt that where the devil had once been he might come again, and all due precau tions were taken. For a trifle you might pur chase from the monks at Lychminster talismans and relics and other holy things which he was known to dread.

Chapter I. Of Wayside Meetings

" Undine, liebes Bildchen du, Seit ich zuerst aus alien Kunden Dein seltsa7n Leuchten aufgefunden, Wie sangst du oft mein Herz in Ruh ! " Wie sch7niegtest du dich an mich lind Und wolltest al/e deine Klagen Ganz sacht nur in das Ohr mir sagen, Ein halb verwbhnt, halb scheues Kind ! " Und manch ein Herz gewann dich Heb Trotz deine7n launisch dunklen Wesen, Und Viele mochten gerne lesen Ein Biichlein, das von dir ich schrieb." De la Motte Fouque. " Blase isn't exactly like a. dragon," Jenet once said in a meditative way, as though she were vol. r. i seeking in vain for a better simile, " but he always makes me think of one." " Well, / think," said the person she was speaking to, who was Tristram — " I think he's more like thundery weather. Sometimes you get hot sunshine, very hot indeed, and some times you get storms !

" A few years ago this same thundery Blase was loafing in the fields in the early days of June, and disconsolately wondering how on earth he should kill time till dinner. As he lifted his eyes and cast them abroad with an enormous yawn, there went down the hill past the stile somebody in a white gown. Then came a throwing away of cigarette and a flourishing of brilliantly blazered arms, and Blase gave chase. " Hi ! Jenet. Jenet, stop, I say !" But when he came to the stile and leaped over it, and began to go down the road, he saw that it was empty. He strained his eyes, but even in the dusk under the trees at the bottom of the hill there was no sign of a white gown to be seen. Trotting slowly down to him from the other side was a rosy old farmer, smiling such a laboured fat and knowing smile that Blase, in his own peculiarly dragon-like way, longed to strangle him.

Instead, he nodded to him, and asked if he had seen Miss Minors anywhere. "Yes, sir," said the farmer, winking ap parently for the private enjoyment of the act. " I did see her, to be sure, but I don't see her now, nowhere. I just met Miss Pierpoint going up the other way " — he put forth tentatively. From Blase's expression he gathered that Miss Pierpoint would not do. "Well, sir, I don't see Miss Jenet, then." With that he scanned the horizon and the lower part of the sky, but, meeting with no success, he touched his hat and trotted on. Blase bit his lip. " Just like Jenet," he growled, and began to kick out the pebbles from the road in such a definitely savage manner that an onlooker would have imagined he was murmuring to himself, " Let the pebble A or B or C represent Jenet, and let the ditch D represent the lower regions to which it is required to kick her."

Then he tramped on down the hill, quite as angry and disappointed about missing Jenet as another man would have been at losing his train or his dinner. "Hi, Blase! Blase, stop, I say!" cried somebody's voice from somewhere up in the clouds, mimicking his own imperative tones. He raised his head. Yes, there she stood the little wretch, nearly at the top of the bank, fitting foxgloves on to her fingers, pink and white alternately, and laughing down at him from behind a briar-bush. " Well ? " she said, and laughed again ; " what do you want ? " But Blase was a young man of slow percep tions, and found it hard to dislodge an idea that had fairly struck root. He began slowly to realize that Jenet had not vanished into air, and he stood still in the middle of the road to grasp the notion. The ways of Jenet were not his ways, nor were they the ways of any one else he knew ; they were too wonderful for him, so he stood where he was and stared up at her.

She finished putting on the foxgloves, and then she ran down the bank. Blase held out his hand. But Jenet admired her pink and white finger-tips in silence, and ignored it. "You might at least have waited when I called you," he said at last. "I didwa.lt," said Jenet. " I waited on the bank." She then contemplated the heavens for some minutes, and Blase tried his hand at stone breaking in a hugely magnificent silence, as though Jenet were something quite too insig nificant for his notice. But silence, where Jenet was, was not a normal condition of things. Soon she glanced with apparent unconscious ness in his direction. He had given up the stone-breaking, and fixed his eyes studiously on the black gold-pierced hedge standing against the sunset at the top of the bank. Somebody had got to speak some time, Jenet remarked to herself, "and I had better be on the plat form," she added half aloud ; " I may have to help him out of the train."

" Is the train in yet, do you think ?" she asked in the most cousinly way. No need to say what train ; the service in Arcadia is not frequent. " No, not for ever so long," said Blase, clumsily trying to adapt his tone to this happy change of circumstances, and thrusting his watch into his pocket again with rather a guilty air. He then sat slowly down on the milestone beside Jenet, as though to demonstrate to her that they both had heaps of time. Whether it was that Blase loved Jenet or hated Jenet that he went so much out of his course, or whether it was that he had some vague idea of enlightening her dark ignorance by being always with her, I do not know. Blase did not know himself. " See, I forget who the old fellow is," he said, rolling a cigarette and lighting it. " It's Mr. Tristram," Jenet vouchsafed, "an old college friend of father's. Poor old man, he's been writing too much, and there's some thing the matter with his brain, and he's coming down here to rest.

He works frightfully hard," she added, with a not unmeaning emphasis that fixed the matter in his mind. Somehow Blase always had plenty of time on his hands. " Wonder what the old beo-o-ar will be like ? " he murmured, evading Jenet's eye. "And father says," Jenet went on, "that I am to amuse him and keep him from his work, or else he'll be ill aoain. I'm afraid I shall net dreadfully tired," she added, with a small sigh of self-pity. " Of course he'll want to lean on my arm, and I shall have to carry shawls, and ■and that." Blase thought old age had some privileges ; but all the same it seemed to him that Mr. Minors would have been a more appropriate stay to the steps of his friend. He ought to have met him at the very least. " If Uncle Basil's gout's bad," he said, "why couldn't he meet him in the fly ?

" " You ought to know why," said Jenet reproachfully. " Miss Sampson's gone to call on Lady Pangham." Blase disposed of Lady Pangham and Miss Sampson in one common fate, while Jenet had wandered back to the awful responsibility hang ing over her. "Imagine me taking charge of him!" she said dolefully. " Suppose he does fall ill again, I expect they will say I didn't do all I might have done. It will be so dull. I shall long for you and Nancy — sometimes," she added, as though the longing were a rare and altogether relative matter. Blase suddenly was aglow with gratification. " I dare say the old fellow will lie down for a good while after lunch," he suggested, by way of comfort. " I should insist on it if I were you. You've no idea how good it is for — for the aged. And I'll come down every after noon, I promise faithfully, and play tennis with you."

"And Nancy," said Jenet, rather more cheerfully ; " Nancy must come too." " O yes, of course Nancy will come." Jenet appeared to be engaged in second thoughts. " But not every afternoon," she said, a minute later ; " I should get just as tired of that." Blase felt rather chilled at this. " Every other afternoon, then ? " Jenet shook her head. " I don't know. I shall be so tired. I shall most likely have to lie down too ! " Then she neatly tore up all her foxgloves and showered them down on him, while Blase was debatine within himself which was the best way to deal wdth Jenet, because if you asked her whether you might do a thing, she was safe to say no, and if you contradicted her, and said you would whether she liked it or not, that was even worse. He had tried it. Here the clock on Gablethorp church began to strike seven.

Jenet raised her head and looked severely at Blase. Blase drooped his, and took long pulls at his cigarette. " Hadn't you better wind up your watch ? " was all Jenet said, and she was gone. "Jenet!" thundered Blase, giving chase, " there's heaps of time. The trains are always late. I can help him up the hill, and it's too late for you to be alone!" He was a little surprised to hear himself say this, because Jenet always went where she wanted, day or night, and the idea had never occurred to him before. " No," said Jenet, hurrying along — but, un fortunately, nobody in Gablethorp could walk so fast as Blase — " Mr. Tristram will walk with me. Good night." Blase growled something to himself, but Jenet took no notice. It never mattered very much to Jenet what Blase said. " I suppose you're coming to gather the burnet-roses with Nancy and me in the morning ?

" said he, dropping back. " I don't know," Jenet said indifferently ; " I'm not at all sure. There's no knowing what I may have to do. Mr. Tristram " " Hang Tristram ! Will you promise ? "Of course not!" Jenet cried scornfully. " Do I ever promise ? " She shook her head and walked on faster still. Blase stood where he was in the angry silence of disappointment, watching her. After all he had done for Jenet ! It was too bad of her, little good-for-nothing that she was. When she had gone a little way, she turned and waved her hand, and called airily to him. " But if you are there," said she, honey-sweet, "perhaps I shall be." And, with the anathemas scarcely past his lips, Blase waved back to her in the most foolishly joyful way, and turned and strode up the hill with a song. It struck him that Jenet had her good points after all, and he felt ready to sacrifice himself to any extent so that she should not be bored by this horrid old man.

Perhaps he could wheel him out in a chair, and Jenet would go with them ; perhaps it would amuse the poor old fellow to watch them playing tennis, or for them to take him on the river. Any simple little gratification of that kind Blase was ready to give him. Joan Pierpoint he passed with a very brief salutation. Miss Pierpoint, after Jenet, lacked flavour. No doubt you know Blase very well by sight, and perhaps you will like to hear the story in which he played a part. He lives in London now, and you can generally meet him about half-past six, riding or driving with his wife down Prince's Gate towards home. Or, if you are ever there, he and she are often to be met in certain lanes and courts in Whitechapel lead ing out of the Commercial Road. But oftener still they go to a small house out Hampstead way, where there lives a little child who seems even dearer to Blase than his own babies.

No one has such a shock of light yellow hair, such a sunburnt honest face, or such flashing eyes as Blase ; no one has quite the same look of having found sunshine after storms. You cannot mistake him. Meanwhile Jenet shaded her eyes from the sun with her hand, and ran down the hill under the great elms that grew in a straight line down each hedgerow. It was not often that people in Gablethorp ran — life was quite too long and leisurely for that, but when they wanted to they were very well able. Blase generally rushed wildly wherever his hot blood took him, and was the standing wonder and awe of Gablethorp. How it could have pro duced such an extremely violent young man it did not know. And Jenet — there was no accounting for Jenet. Whatever one hoped she would do she didn't do, and whatever one hoped she would not do she always did, but whatever she did one was always provoked into liking that best.

" How tiresome Blase is ! " she was remarking to herself as she ran down, "and so stupid! No doubt old Mr. Tristr ■" But her soliloquy was cut suddenly short, as she perceived a man sitting on the seat by the side of the road. He was reading, and did not see her, but it is inexpedient to commune out aloud with one's soul when there are other people about. Jenet walked by on the other side, and chastely resisted the temptation to look at him, although a stranger in Gablethorp was a legitimate thing to stare at. It was even allowable to stop and walk round him, if you were particularly interested. When she reached the station, she found that the train had for once set aside all precedent and been punctual. And the solitary porter had seen no old gentleman that came by it — " although," he added as an after-thouo-ht, when she was turning disconsolate away, " there was some luggage, ma'am, name of Tristram, and Banks is a-takin' of it up to the rectory now."

Jenet decided in her own mind that the un happy old man had set out, hoping to find his way, and was now most likely lost in a maze of fields. "And it's all Blase's fault," she said to herself, as she came out of the station and began to walk very fast in the hope of over taking him — " every bit Blase's fault ! " It was well for Blase that he sat safely at home. Then she dwelt for some moments on King David's aphorism: "All men are liars." It gave her great satisfaction to have her ex perience confirmed in high places, and she determined to point out the text in a kind manner to Blase at the very earliest opportunity. By this time she had got nearly back to the seat on the hill. The same man was sitting there ; but now he had got out a notebook, and was writing busily in it, while the open bag by his side was full of books.

Jenet walked in the middle of the road, and paused irresolutely as she came near to him. He was a stranger, and most likely had come by train ; perhaps he had seen Mr. Tristram, and it was dreadful to think of the poor old man wandering helplessly about in the meadows, perhaps blindfold ! Jenet had but a vague idea of brain-affections. Brains in Gablethorp seldom gave any trouble. She rather thought he would have his head tied up in a sort of turban-bandage. " Have you come by the train, please ? " she asked from where she stood ; " or by the carrier ? " Those were Gablethorp's two methods of approach. He did not hear. Jenet came a little nearer, and said it again. He got up and raised his hat, and waited with his eyes absently fixed on her face. He was making a note about Helen of Troy, and somehow he confused Jenet with her, and could only wonder in silence at her speaking English so prettily.

" Did you come by train ? " asked Jenet a little louder, tapping her foot rather impatiently. It was stupid of him, she thought, to dream in the daytime. " Yes." " And did you see an old man get out at this station — quite an old man, with — with his head tied up ?" Jenet moved her hands about her own head as though to express a bandage of many folds. " No" — after thinking for a minute ; " I was the only one who got out." " Thank you," said Jenet, with a little sigh of disappointment. And then she added, being like Sigismund, super granimaticam, " I've come to meet him, you see. His name's Tristram " " My name's Tristram," the stranger volunteered, and he began to have a pleasant glimmering of the truth. " Is it ? " said she, half turning and looking somewhat doubtfully up at him. " But you can't be my Mr. Tristram.

You " — with engaging naivete — " O, you're not nearly old enough ! " He smiled. " Then I'm afraid I'm not your Tristram ; but if you come to the question of possession, I suppose I belong to Mr. Minors, and " " Then you are," interrupted Jenet, a little puzzled, but greatly relieved ; " you must be, and I've come to meet you. I wish " — with a sudden small petulant pout such as every day of his life caused Bhse to grovel in the dust before her or to quarrel violently, according to the state of his temper at the time — " I wish," said Jenet, " you'd told me that when I passed before ! " This time he fairly laughed. " I didn't even see you, and if I had I shouldn't have known who you were. And — I don't now." " Me ? " Jenet had never been asked such a question before. " I'm Jenet Minors, of course."

The introduction thus happily through, Jenet proposed that they should go home. He walked on by her side, a little mystified by the whole thing, but feeling that the gods were doubtless managing their own business in their own way, and could get on very well without his interference. And he listened while Jenet explained to him how the fly was engaged, how of course Aunt Victoria could not come, how her father's gout was bad, and the carriage being mended, and how she was the only one left to meet him — and did he mind ? No, he assured her— she was looking up rather anxiously — he did not mind at all. And then he wandered off into silent lamentations at the sound of the word "gout." It was a horrible shock. Twenty years ago Basil Minors had not looked as though he could live to have gout. Tristram had come to Gablethorp having in his mind's eye a twenty-year old vision, made up of frag ments of memories — a slim, spiritual-looking man, with an open collar and long hair that curled inwards like the blue locks of the King of Diamonds ; tea drinkings ; sonnets to various divinities, darkly figured forth in the habit of shepherdesses, as Clarissa, Leonora, and Dul sabella; melancholy and gently pessimistic theories about the futility of things human and the improbability of things divine, and so on, and so on.

But gout ! Consumption is not unbecoming to a poet, and one can pardon and even admire small-pox in one's heroes ; but gout ! Tristram sio-hed. to to " Can't you run uphill ?" Jenet's clear young voice broke in here. " We're so late ; but it's not my fault," she added quickly, as the remem brance of Blase's enormities once more inflamed her ; " I was deceived — shamefully deceived ! " Tristram looked dubiously at the long steep road, stretching up and melting into the sky, and said, no, he hardly thought he could. " We bookworms can only crawl, you know," he said in a rueful sort of way ; " we can't leap and fly like you Arcadians. And — I've been ill." He said this in the most apologetic fashion, as though he really would not have mentioned it except to explain. Jenet felt rather ashamed of herself.

Ouo-ht she to insist on his taking her arm ? Ouo-ht she to carry his bag ? She glanced up in his face, and saw that he really was very gaunt and lean and cadaverous, and then she re membered that on her lay the burden of the responsibility of his health. " I'm so sorry," she said; and then added quickly, "I think you'd better give me your note-book, you know." "Why?" " Because you will want to be writing in it. and if — if anything happens, I shall be blamed." She turned up quite a careworn face to him. He really would be a burden to her, she felt, and she certainly would long for Blase with all his enormities. This he declined; and Jenet, after enduring the pricks of conscience for some moments and glancing askance at his bag, finally demanded that. " It's far too heavy for you," she said emphatically — Jenet never was generous by halves, nor ungenerous by halves, as Blase well knew — "it's far too heavy for you, with all those books and papers in it.

And I quite expected to do that sort of thing, you know. I told Blase so. Shawls or anything, I — don't mind." Tristram protested he was not so terribly shattered as she seemed to think, and smiled at her anxious face. " In a week I shall be vol. quite well," he said ; " and then I hope to do a great deal of work in this fresh air." "Then you must just unhope It," said Jenet, in her imperious way, feeling that the immediate future was likely to be very trying for her. Tristram positively laughed, and then she forgot all about her anxiety, and they fell to talking of other matters as they turned out of the road into the fields, and went gently down the meadows towards red -tiled Gablethorp. Jenet pointed out to him the brook where the biggest and bluest forget-me-nots grew, and the hedges where she and Blase and Nancy wrent maying not so many years ago, and the tree where they had always got oak-leaves for the twenty-ninth of May, and the place on the edge of the heath where there was a fairy-ring.

Tristram told her the fairy-rings were the places where Artemis and her maidens danced in the moon light when the clay's chase was over. Jenet stared, but was too polite to contradict him. Artemis she had never heard of, and therefore did not believe in, but the fairies were quite old friends of hers. That is one beauty of a limited range which we all overlook. It does enable you to deny heaps of things with the greatest certainty and comfort. By-and-by they came to a small wicket-gate with a high elm at either end of it, in a sandstone lane. Jenet stopped. " We'll go in through the orchard," she said, and opened the gate ; " it's so far to go round to the other gate." And then they were in a wilderness of young green, with the last fluttering pink-and-white petals waiting the next breeze to join the pink and-white carpet which their fellows had spread.

They passed through that to the garden, and Tristram, lifting his eyes, saw a big heterogeneous old red house showing indistinctly beautiful in the last rays from the west. But it was all too solidly substantial ; Basil Minors should have lived in lemon groves and rose entangled bowers. Jenet led him into a quaint panelled hall, ornamented with stags' heads, and flagged with immense square white stones and small diamond shaped black ones. The black oak walls were dyed all manner of strange and wronderful colours as the evening light fell on them to to through the stained mullioned windows. " I think father is in the library," said Jenet, looking back to where Tristram had paused under one of the windows, seeling the same vague awe and quietude one feels in an empty church. They went down a long passage, flagged by the same white stones with all the corners cut off and filled in by the little black ones, until Jenet opened a heavy door across the end of the passage and led him into a large oak-panelled room.

By a small fire sat Mr. Minors in an arm-chair, with one bulky foot on a cushion in front of him. Opposite to him was a lady, knitting, and sitting as upright as only the last generation could. In three long strides Tristram had reached the fireplace, and stood looking into the face he had not seen since it was his ideal of spiritual beauty twenty years ago. "At last, old friend," said Mr. Minors, in a voice that trembled partly from memory and partly from the fear that Tristram would bump his foot. And he looked up to see the same Tristram he had known bending over him, only beginning to grow old. Just the same deep eyes with their sudden flashings and darkenings, whose colour no man could tell until they flashed light blue fire on him ; just the same heavy brows ; just the same drab hair with ideas of its own about curling ; just the same unclassic nose and creased light-brown face.

Tristram had never yet been anybody's ideal of any sort of beauty. But there is this comfort in matters of that kind : we know what we have and have not been, but we know not what we shall be. But alas for Tristram's vision ! The grey eyes that had once dewily languished twinkled now with a dry humour, and there was a bloom, not to say a fruitiness, in Mr. Minors' cheeks unmistakably suggestive of libations of web encrusted port and burnt-offerings of the flesh of bulls and goats. The once-so-slender waist had become like Chaucer's, " no poppet to embrace ; " and as for the spiritual beauty — what becomes of the sal volatile when the smelling-bottle is too often opened ? But Tris tram firmly grasped the plump white hand, and as they looked into each other's eyes the twenty years of separation seemed as though they had never been ; they were both back in the old golden days at Oxford, before Tristram knew the pangs of joy and sorrow, or Mr. Minors the twitches of gout.