CHAPTER II

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, 1 December 1900, Page 190

CHAPTER II

THOMAS — NOT SAINT,

A perfect autumn morning followed the unseasonable snowstorm of the night, and Howard Grey's first definite sensation on awaking was one of relief that he might proceed on his way.

He had always held himself aloof from individual intimacy, liking better to study mankind scientifically and in the abstract. Therein lay his failure ; the proper study of the novelist is man. But he disliked the emotional ; personal experience of sentiment was distasteful to him. Heroism, sorrow, and despair he relegated and allotted to certain temperaments and constitutions. The delirium and idiosyncrasies which would not be allotted he placed under the headiug of hysteria. Altogether he found himself in an atmosphere he wanted to escape. He had, last night, been befrayed into an emotion unusual to him, and to which he was reluctant to submit himself again.

To observe was his business, to feel, a waste of force. Nor was this creed a new one to him. What he lacked in sympathy and originality he made up for in a great capacity by toil.

Born of poor parents — to whom his talents had been a great wonder and pride — they had roused in him ambitious dreams that did not die at their death. As a lad he had realised the sacrifices made for his education, and he had set himself as steadily as his father and mother to surmount disabilities of birth and opportunity, and make his own name. His energy and will had created a law of tyranny over himself to which he bent obediently ; he recognised no law higher than a man's will.

This creed had stamped upon him a certain nobility of bearing ; the pride of bis mind held his body erect. His dark, rather large head was poised independently. His tall, loose-limbed frame was tensely strung.

The strong jaw was stiff with resolution, and a combativeness more habitual than natural. He looked what he was morally — a self-made man. But once lose control over himself, and he would bo swept along by a force he had not yet recognised. In fighting the world he had unconsciously been fighting his own flesh and blood.

The original features Nature bad given him, and which should have been mobile and expressive, were sharpened to his mood, his lips compressed. The grey eyes, deep set uuder well-marked brows, had a trick of veiling themselves with languid lids when their owner did not wish to reveal his thoughts. In anger there was a repelling force about Howard Grey that made him feared, in friendliness of mood a charm that made him almost magnetic.

This charm he brought into the breakfast room. Caroline, white and still, after hours of anguished shame, in a tremor of apprehension for the meeting following last night's confession, looked at him with grateful relief visible in her eyes that Howard did not see. He was struggling to rescue the situation from embarrassment, not from any sense of compassion, but simply from his personal instinct to escape the abnormal.

Frank Osmond responded to the note of cheerfulness as though a natural tone had been struck, as he had done the night previously till Howard's denunciation of weakness had stricken him.

Caroline, who, after her impulse of confidence, which was in reality an appeal to a strong man's mercy, had drawn back sensitively, felt herself lifted again into selfrespect. Her nervous depression passed like a cloud, and something of the girl emerged, the girl who had been, before her youth was forced into a proud loneliness. There was, too, exultation in the man who, appearing inaccessible, had been accessible. The fact appealed to the woman's imagination. His aggressive attitude towards failure had not promised the toleration that his manner this morning implied, but his manner was, in reality, an outcome of the

pleasuvablo anticipation of immediate escape from a strained situation, and not of tho delicate perceptions attributed. When he announced his intention of " moving on," he was met with, " Must you go?" from Frauk Osmond, with such an emphasis of regret on the " must " that Howard reiterated his decision a little emphatically : " To-night must see me ' a day's march nearer home.' " All the eagerness left Frank's face. " I'm sorry. I hoped to show you a rather tine stretch of forest, and if you really decided not to turn back, ' Sawyer Thomas, 1 at one of the mills, would put you up for the night. Tho coach passes his mill to-morrow morning." Caroline did not speak. Howard interpreted her silence aright — she would ask no concession. The wistfulness in the thin, pale face of the young man, with its pathetic traces of a suffering, too recent and poignant, to be past, roused again in the man who had won the battles with the lions on his own path, an unwilling compunction to hurt. But do what he would, his pity was tinged with scorn. It was tho something of stateliness in Caroline that levelled him and prevailed. " Good !" he said with heartiness, then took his leave of his hostess with warm thanks for hospitality received. "The world is small," he said. "We may meet again, and if I can serve you at any time, command me." He had a brief misgiving that his words were not apt; they had a faint suggestiveness of her need and his lack of it. For heaven's sake let him get where every word might not seem a stone. Frank Osmond lingered at the door for a moment in that affectionate gentleness which he showed openly for his sister. After a few yards he turned back and waived his hat: " Good-by, white wahinc /" White woman ! How exactly that suited her. Snow and moonlight. What radiance she had, had nothing of sunlight in it, nothing of the morning.

The two men went down the valley together rather silently. The thin, almost attenuated figure of the younger man, with his spectacled eyes and stooping shoulders, looked old heside the upright carriage and conscious strength of his companion. If they had known what they were going forth to meet, how each was to affect the other's destiny, they would have been startled. All they were conscious of now was, that between them a great gulf was fixed. One stood on the side of honour, the other of dishonour. "I don't think I'm cad enough to let the fact affect me," Howard Grey was thinking. " It's the theft I despise — the weakness of it. I've been poor enough, heaven knows, hard put io it for a meal, but " "What this man has done I also might have done. I had better chances. It is irretrievable," Frank Osmond was saying despairingly in his heart. Both had only a ' half truth, for both had limited a man's possibilities of strength and weakness. At the bend of the river which would hide the solitary stone cottage from sight both men turned involuntarily and waved farewell to tho indistinct figure still standing in the porch. Howai'd Grey thought he was looking on The Whare for the last time. Prank Osmond expected to i^eturn at sundown, and again neither was right. Both were approaching a crisis inevitable to their temperament and outlook on life. Between that morning's sunrise and the morrow's sunset Howard Gray learnt the poignant smart of self-scorn. Leaving the valley, they passed over undulating country, thickly wooded. Sawmills stood at intervals on the verge of the forest; an occasional cottage or sheepstation nestled to a hill, bnt the low-lyiug land was waste and swampy, desolate and man-forsaken. There was a good deal of water in the vales, numei'ous pools of chocolate-colour reflected the reeds and flax on their brim with mirror-like faithfulness. At times they passed under overhanging banks of fern, or met a gorge tumbling headlong over mossy boulders to reach the

river, but everywhere was silence, broken only by the song of the larks or their own voices. For the further they got into the open with the rich sunlight beating down upon them the more natural and at ease with one another they became. Howard had forgotten his unwillingly judgment, and in the rare delight of congenial companionship Frank Osmond had forgotten what awaited him at the end of the day — the going back to his death in life.

They sat down at noon under the shade of a giant pine, and while they vested, ate the fruit and sandwiches Caroline had provided, in the fashion and with the appetite of school boys, afterwards quenching their thirst at a clear spring. The fear that had lain in Howard's heart was soothed by his companion's belief in his powers, and his ungrudging admiration of them.

They talked as two friends might talk — yet each with his reserve.

It was late in the afternoon when they came to the sawmill of which Frank Osmond had spoken, standing on the verge of the swampy country over which they had passed, and backed by a forest-clad hill behind which the sun was already setting.

"That," said Howard, nodding in the direction of the slowly-descending ball of fire, " reminds one that the summer is over ; a day like this is apt to make one forget it t How many miles have we come? Are you game to tackle the return tramp ?"

• Frank smiled sadly. " It's not far as the crow flies. We dodged about a good bit coming over, and its full moon."

They stood looking silently over the waste of valley and hill ; the hollows were in shadow, and long shadows were trailing over the slopes ; heaps of dark boulders and clumps of bush were the milestones marking the way they had come. Something in the hopeless dejection of attitude the figure beside him assumed, gave Howard an instant's quick understanding of all it must mean to Frank Osmond, the lonely retracing of a road that leads — nowhere.

Howard held out his hand impulsively, as he had to Caroline the night before ; the

languid lids were lifted from the deep grey eyes, and in their steady look Frank saw knowledge.

" Work, man ; grind away at something ; grind hard. It must be damnable!" Howard spoke roughly, almost gruffly.

" I couldn't — quite at first," answered Frank, brokenly. " I— l have lost the grip. . . It all slips. . . I get back — there " He shuddered. "Iv the cell — there was a star that used to shine between the bars. . . You'll find it all there. He held a roll of MS. towards Howard. "I should like you to read it, then burn it, or do what you like with it," he said, with the weary irritation in his voice that Howard had noticed the previous night. He palled himself together with an effort. '' Grood-bye ! Thank you for to-

day!"

"Good-bye !"

Their hands and eyes met, then quite contrary to his previous intention Howard gave Frank Osmond his. card. " That's my Melbourne address ; write or look me up when you have the inclination."

He stood and watched the stooping, solitary figure plunging into the deepening shadows.

" Poor devil !" he muttered, " he's made a muddle of it." He put the roll of MS. into the pocket of his overcoat, and turned his attention to the sawmill, where Frank Osmond had assured him he would find a hearty welcome and accommodation for the

night,

" Sawyer Thomas " was standing at the mill entrance, "in the attitude of a porkbutcher taking an airing at his shop door," commented Howard. He was a roundfaced, good-humoured-looking man, clean shaven and close cropped, not a bit like the typical farmer or woodman, and might have passed for any age between thirty and fifty With brisk, smart movements he conducted Howard to the clean parlour of the cottage attached to the mill, then with nimble fingers prepared and served a substantial meal, apologising for the absence of " Polly," who had gone into the township marketing.

" You ought to bo proprietor of an inn," remarked Howard. " You don't look in your natural element among the timber."

" It was religion drew me into solitudo !" he answered mournfully.

Howard looked at the red, round face, and keen blue eyes. " Not ;\ spirUuelk typo, quite," he commented mentally.

"For contemplation?" ho queried

answered

" Contemplation bo blowcd !"

Thomas, who certainly was not a saint. " I run away with mo own wife of fivo years standin' — cat an' run with 'or !"

In a tempest of recollection he swept some of the china off the table.

" Easy ! Right you are, sir ! Hut whenever I think of religion I feel wicked !"

He carefully picked up the pieces and carried away the tray. Presently he returned, as though he could not resist the unaccustomed luxury of having a listener. " You're not a parson?"

" I'm a writer

" Parsons are cranks. 'Owsoovor, I put it to you. I'd as nice a little 'am and pork pie business as you'd wish to seu, an' all gone to the dogs because of them bloomin' saints! That's were Polly was weak — I will say that for Polly she was inconsistent — first, she would 'aye the pie shop an' then sho wouldn't 'aye it. When I first courted Polly she was the sensiblist an' the prettiest girl at raeetin'. To see 'er a siugin' of the 'ims with one eye on Kingdom Como an' the other on me, so ter speak, did a man's 'oart good. It sort o' balanced things. But Polly 'ad a decent sorter hambition them days.

"'No, Thomas,' she ses, ' we'll wait till you can set up for yerself,' she bos, ' if it's ever such a small way. You've been in the business long enough to know what's what.' That's what Polly sed.

"So we waited, an' iv this 'ere country a feller needn't wait for ovor if 'o's got any sorter shovo in the shoulder 'c puts to the wheel. First, 'c wants to know what Vh a-shovin' for — then to go on shovin'."

" Ah !" said Howard, " have a cigar Well ?"

" When we come back from the 'oneymoon we opened the shop — as tidy a little place as never was, with a marble slab in the winder an' another to serve on, an' a bakehouse an' mmcm' machine in the backyard, and Polly in a pink frock, which matched 'er cheeks, an' she knew it" —

Thomas smiled reflectively, and blew a cloud of smoke — " makin' a picture as she served out the pies, an' the way she cut the 'am ! We did a roariri' trade among the young men ; come, in fact, to be the centre of the locality, for when the wimmin got jealous they come for a pork pie or 'alf a pound of 'am cut thin, to take Polly's pints, an' go 'ome an' turn up their nose, an' wonder to goodness what was to be seen in 'er, an' copy the way she did 'er 'air.

" Them was days. I kep ray hye on Polly; she ses I was always jealous. I say I wasn't, and surely a man knows 'is own principles, an' mine was — let a woman drive if it's the road yer both want to go, but keep your foot near the break. I believe in women's rights, this country is great on them; but let me tell you this, it's like dressin' up a pig in silver harness to give fine ideas to some women. They can't be guided by 'em, and are only made to look redicilous.

" When I was in business — you maythink I am not tellin' you the truth — women would come in with ideas fine as air, you know the sort, an' go 'ome an' gobble up the 'am behind the pantry door, so as no one should suspect 'em of 'uman nature an' a good appetite. I shall not alter on it. I sed this to Polly when first the spiritual wimrnen got 'old of 'er, and this is what I sed :

" ' Polly, nature is nature,' an' she said

" ' Oh ! that's an old idea — so thoroughly old. What is a woman to do ? ' What is there to do when a man talks like that?

" The words I ses was this : ' Now look 'ere,' I ses, ' look 'ere, ain't we two been one flesh an' bones an' business till this hagitation about woman's superiority over man's deferiority got into yer 'ed ?'

"' I've kaist my peai'ls before swine,' she sed, ' kaist 'em before swine !'

" Which I put it to you would rile any man if 'c was in the pork business."

Howard saw the application, he affirmed. The deep set eyes were laughing behind their concealed lids.

" And then ?"

" I spoke up like a man of 'onour — like an 'onorable man I spoke," reiterated Thomas, "an' Polly sed I was sittin' on 'er hasperations which she 'oped 'ad riz 'igher than pies, an' she took to servin' an carvin' the 'am with 'er gloves on. I put it to you whether any 'elthy minded public would stand that?"

Howard acknowledged that he could not

recall an instance

" 'Owsoever," resumed the narrator, ' Polly jined a new sec' wot 'ad come to the town, an' called the leader ' Brother.' 'E gave Polly a picture of 'im. 'E might 'ay been the Pope of Rome standin' on the mantleshelf, as large as life 'c stood, an' Polly a dustin' 'im. I put up with a deal. I looked over Polly sendin' to the openin' of the new church six dozen pies — beautiful pies they were. I swallered them saints callin' my Polly 'sister,' but when she started callin' me 'Brother Thomas,' look 'ere,' I sed, 'I'm not a goin' to 'aye it.' These were the words I sed : ' I'm not agin' to 'aye it.' But I 'ad to. When a woman turns saint she's 'ard in 'er 'uman feelins'. I sometimes think if Polly 'ad 'ad a babby she wouldn't 'ay' been that much taken up with 'er soul. It's wonderful 'ow a woman's soul gets swamped up in a babby !' "

He blew so much smoke about himself in a moment's silent rumination that he looked like a man in a mist.

" We was very aristoeratical in them days ; we didn't see much of one another didn't Polly an' me," he resumed presently. "We didn't always meet at meal times, for Polly 'ad put us off our flesh-food an' taken to boiled haricot beans an' tomartises, an' things for the mortification of our flesh. It mortified me a deal. I got down; my

spirits fell, an' all the time the profits of the shop was goin' to the New Jerusalem, as they called the speculation. An' 1 began to think if the brother was in the union more than 'im an' me would be well provided for. 'Owsoever, I got that lonesome . Well, lonesome wasn't in it ! So I played a little joke," went on Thomas, with a wink. " If Polly won't only associate with saints, blest if I won't be one myself ! An' I tell you of it ; an' Polly sent the last of our savin's to the New Jerusalem as a thanksgivin' offerin', I was that riled. It's just as well I'd been livin' on vegetables — a 'onest pie might a over-'eated me. I was bilin'. Keep quiet— that's my motto — keep quiet, an' for six mortal months I kep under. Twice a week I went to hear Brother preach ; 'c brayin' out so that it went through you like a gun. The Brother was killin' polite to me, 'c was, no one could be politer, but 'c smiled above my 'ed in a manner that fetched Old Nick to my finger tips. It took the likes of me to know the likes of 'im — I was shammin' rnyself — but 'ow to proceed, that's what I ask you ? When a man's only shammin' Vs a saint, what nex' ?" Thomas screwed up his small eyes and looked interrogations. " Complictitions — usually," responded Howard. " An' right you are, sir ! Things got wuss and wuss, Polly refusin' to touch, taste, or 'andle that unclean thing — pork, an' the good shepherd a-shearin' 'is sheep consistent. 'Owsoever, not content with that 'c set 'em marchin' through the streets singin' they'd rather spend a day in the New Jerusalem than a thousand anywheres else, an' there I were stranded. I sort, a got chock full of spirituality. What with trampin' through the open streets up to 'er neck in mud an' other mortifications Polly's flesh was nearly done for, an' she took to coughin' 'orrid. " ' Now, look 'ere, Polly,' I sed, ' drop it ' — that's the words I said, ' drop it, pork or no pork, 'am or no 'am, 'usbands or brothers saints or sinners, there's too much grace in your dealin's "with me, and it don't agree

with you neither. Take a little rum 'ot, and go to your bed an' be missed up a bit, mid blow the Now Jerusalem !'

" She looks at me with shining eyes, and she seys, ' I affirm, ' sho ses — for that was the saint's way of denyiu' cvil — ' that there is no sickness, an' no sorrer. All is good !'

"An' you may think I" am not tollin' you the truth, but she smiled in such a way that it got into my throat. An' I said :

"'Things is gettin' darned bad, and it seems to mo they'll get vvuss beforo they

mend !'

'"Put a denial on fear, brother Thomas, she answered back. ' All is good.'

"'Not that good, but I've seen hotter,' I sed, au' I'll not deny it to you I. was gettin' riled — mad, I was. ' Sister Folly,' I sow, sarcastical like, ' tho sweetness o' thoso yor saints don't settle on my stummoclc — it turns to bile.'

" ' I deny gall an' bitterness,' she wont on affirm in' in the clap-trap of the Brother, lookiu' all the while that miserable an' down I could a — well there !

" ';Polly, old girl,' I ses, ' wasn't we 'appy in the old days when you stayed in your own 'ome, an' loved your own 'usband, an' made the centre o' the neighbourhood, oatin' your grub with a will ? Answer me !' An' she answered with a little smile that peeped out behind a mist, an' went in agen like a

winter sun-glint,

" ' Them were days o' darkness,' sho ses

"'Then blow me,' I ses, ' if I don't wish it was that murky wo couldn't see a liinch before our mutual noses ' That was my words, ' an' we 'ad to 'old 'ard to one another to get along at all. Are you goin' to give up this tommy-rot, or hain't you ?'

" ' I thought,' she ses, ' you was a renowod man I'm disappinted in you, Brother Thomas — an' you professin' too !'

" ' Renewed !' I ses, ' renewed es it ? I've

been renewed out a 'ouse an* 'omo ! Renewed inter skin an' bones ! Renewed from a 'onerable man wot owed no man anythink into a bankrup' — that's wot I've been renewed inter. An' as to professions — well, all the brother there is about rue is — no

'elthy-minded man sticks at anythin' when 'c sees another man cuttiu 'im oat in 'is own wife's opinions. Bat there's a limit, an' I'll not tell you an untruth — there is a limit, an' I've reached mine. Either you turn your back on the New Jerusalem, or you turn your back on me,' I ses. "'I deny all fear,' she ses. "'O, all right!' I ses, 'all right!' "There! Polly would tell you ' " ' One movnin' she went to the door to fetch in the milk. The milkman was a brother . 'E put somethin' under a pint inter the jug, then 'c sighed an' sed this : " ' Brother Thomas 'as 'ad a fall,' 'c ses. " Polly she screamed, and leaned up agen the door-post.' "' A fall ! 0, poor Thomas ! Is 'c much hurt ?' " ' A fall into drink,' sed our brother, the milkman.' " An' Polly did cry. " ' An, I ses, • All is good !' " '0, no, no,' she ses. ' Not all, Thomas !' " ' Exactly so,' thinks I, ' but I will not deceive you.' I had reached my limit, an' this was the words I sed : " ' 'Im or me, Polly — the Saint or the Sinner !' " ' I think,' she ses, ; I'll 'aye the Sinner !' " And I am not tellin' you an' ontruth. " Well, there got rumours about that Polly 'ad fallen away from grace, an' one night I went to meetin', an' I marched up to brother, an' this is what I sed : 'Do you call yourself a man ? I call you a monkey in the shape of men's clothes !' " ' Yes,' sed 'c. "'Yes/ said I. 'An' directly all the meetin' listened. Mice wasn't in it. But I flew out at 'im as though you had shot me out — they wasn't used to me. I knocked 'im down.

" ' Torn,' sed Polly, puttin' 'er arm in mine, ' let us go 'ome.' An' the next day the New Jerusalem put us out of brotherhood, an' 'ere we are ! I took Polly right away. My principles is this : trim other folks oandles if you like, but don't carry the wick you've snuffed around to give other folks a

smell of it ! An' that's what I objected to. Before Howard could make any remark a soft, rather musical, voice called from the mill: '"Tom! Tom— us!' Sawyer Thomas jumped hastily to his feet, and smiled delightedly. "That's Polly!" he explained, and placing a decanter of whisky and a jug of water at Howard's elbow, said : " I'll give a look in, sir, later," and bustled away, the pleasant voice calling as he disappeared : "Tom! Tom— us!"