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The Master Mummer, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Book 2 - Chapter 5 |
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_ BOOK II CHAPTER V "I have never seen anything like this," Isobel said softly. I looked up from the writing-pad on my knee, and she met my glance with a smile of contrition. "Ah," she said. "I forgot that I must not talk. Indeed, I did not mean to, but--look!" I followed her eyes. "Well," I said, "tell me what you see." "There are so many beautiful things," she murmured. "Do you see how thick and green the grass is in the meadows there? How the quaker grasses glimmer?--you call them so, do you not?--and how those yellow cowslips shine like gold? What a world of colour it all seems. London is so grey and cold, and here--look at the sea, and the sky, with all those dear little fleecy white clouds, and the pink and white of all those wild roses wound in and out of the hedges. Oh, Arnold, it is all beautiful!" "Even without a motor-car!" I remarked. She looked at me a little resentfully. "Motoring is very delightful," she said, "although you do not like it. Of course, it would be nice if Arthur were here!" She looked away from me seawards, and I found myself studying her expression with an interest which had something more in it than mere curiosity. At odd times lately I had fancied that I could see it coming. To-day, for the first time, I was sure. The smooth transparency of childhood, the unrestrained but almost animal play of features and eyes, reproducing with photographic accuracy every small emotion and joy--these things were passing away. Even before her time the child was seeking knowledge. As she sat there, with her steadfast eyes fixed upon the smooth blue line where sea and sky met, who could tell what thoughts were passing in her mind? Not I, not Mabane, nor any of us into whose care she had come. Only I knew that she saw new things, that the rush of a more complex and stronger life was already troubling her, the sweet pangs of its birth were already tugging at her heartstrings. My pencil rested idly in my fingers, my eyes, like hers, sought that distant line, beyond which lies ever the world of one's own creation. What did she see there, I wondered? Never again should I be able to ask with the full certainty of knowing all that was in her mind. The time had come for delicate reserves, the time when the child of yesterday, with the first faint notes of a new and wonderful song stealing into her heart, must fence her new modesty around with many sweet elusions and barriers, fairy creations to be swept aside later on in one glad moment--by the one chosen person. There was a coldness in my heart when I realized that the time had come even for the child who had tripped so lightly into our lives so short a time ago, to pass away from us into that other and more complex world. It was the decree of sex, nature's immutable law, sundering playfellows, severing friendships, driving its unwilling victims into opposite corners of the world, with all the pitilessness of natural law. Nevertheless, the thought of these things as I looked at Isobel made me sad. She was young indeed for these days to come, for the shadows to steal into her eyes, and the song of trouble to grow in her heart. "Tell me," I asked softly, "what you see beyond that blue line." "I can tell you more easily," she said, glancing down with a faint smile at my empty pages, "what I see by my side--a very lazy man. And," she continued, crumpling a little ball of heather in her fingers and throwing it with unerring aim at Allan, "another one over there!" "My picture," Allan protested, "is finished." "Nonsense!" she exclaimed, preparing to rise, but he waved her back. "In my mind," he added. "Don't misunderstand me. The casual and ignorant observer glancing just now at my canvas might come to the same conclusion as you--a conclusion, by-the-bye, entirely erroneous. I will admit that my canvas is unspoilt. Nevertheless, my picture is painted." She looked across at him reproachfully. "Allan, how dare you!" she exclaimed. "Only Arnold has the right to be subtle. I have always regarded you as a straightforward and honest person. Don't disappoint me." "St. Andrew forbid it!" Allan declared. "My meaning is painfully simple. I build up my picture first in my mind. Its transmission to canvas is purely mechanical. Here goes!" He took up his palette, and in a few moments was hard at work. Isobel pointed downwards to my writing-pad. "Can you too match Allan's excuse?" she asked. "Is your story already written?" I shook my head. "I have been watching you," I answered. "Besides, for a perfectly lazy person, are you not rather a hard task-mistress? Consider that this is our first day of summer--the first time we have seen the sun make diamonds on the sea, the first west wind which has come to us with the scent of cowslips and wild roses. I claim the right to be lazy if I want to be." She smiled. "The poet," she murmured, "finds these things inspiring." "The poet," I answered, "is an ordinary creature. Nowadays he eats mutton-chops, plays golf, and has a banking account. The real man of feeling, Isobel, is the man who knows how to be idle. Believe me, there is a certain vulgarity in seeking to make a stock-in-trade of these delicious moments." "That is not fair," she protested. "How should we all live if none of you did any work?" "For your age, Isobel," I declared seriously, "you are very nearly a practical person. You make me more than ever anxious for an answer to my last question. What were you thinking of just now?" Her eyes seemed to drift away from mine. A touch of her new seriousness returned. She pointed to that thin blue line. "Beyond there," she said, "is to-morrow, and all the to-morrows to come. One sees a very little way." "Our limitations," I answered, "are life's lesson to us. If to-morrow is hidden, so much the more reason that we should live to-day." "Without thought for the morrow?" "Without care for it," I answered. "Are we not Bohemians, and is it not our text?" She shook her head. "It is not yours," she answered slowly. "I am sure of that." I looked at her quickly. "What do you mean?" "Just what I say," she answered gravely. "Men and women to whom the present is sufficient surely cannot achieve very much in life. All the time they must concentrate powers which need expansion. I think that it must be those who try to climb the walls, those even who tear their fingers and their hearts in the great struggle for freedom, who can make themselves capable of great things, even if escape is impossible. But I do not think that escape is so impossible after all, is it? There have been men, and women too, who have lived in all times, to whom there have been no to-morrows or any yesterdays. Only it seems rather hard that life for those who seek it must always be a battle!" I did not answer her for several minutes. It was true, then, that the old days had passed away. Isobel, the child whom we had known and loved so well, had disappeared. It was Isobel the incomprehensible who was taking her place. What might the change not mean for us?... Later we walked back over an open heath yellow with gorse, and faintly pink with the promise of the heather to come. Isobel carried her hat in her hand. She walked with her head thrown back, and a smile playing every now and then upon her lips. She was so completely absorbed that I found myself every now and then watching her, half expecting, I believe, to find some physical change to accord with that other more mysterious evolution. She walked with all the grace of long limbs and unfettered clothing. Her figure, though perfectly graceful, and with that same peculiar distinction which had first attracted me, was as yet wholly immature. But in the face itself there were signs of a coming change. Wherein it might lie I could not tell, but it was there, an intangible and wholly elusive thing. I think that a certain fear of it and what it might mean oppressed me with the sense of coming trouble. I was more fully conscious then than ever before of the moral responsibility of our peculiar charge. We crossed a straight dusty road, cleaving the rolling moor like a belt of ribbon. Isobel looked thoughtfully along it. "I wonder," she said, "when Arthur will come down!" The folly of a man is a thing sometimes outside his own power of control. A second before I had been wondering of whom and what she had been thinking. "Not just yet, I'm afraid," Allan answered, stopping to light his pipe. "It is not easy for him to get backwards and forwards, and I believe that he is by way of being rather busy just now." "What a nuisance!" Isobel declared, looking behind her regretfully. "The roads about here seem so good." "The roads are good, but the heath is better," Allan answered. "I will race you for half a pound of chocolates to that clump of pines!" "You are such a slow starter," she laughed, bounding away before he had time to drop his easel. "Make it a pound!" I picked up Allan's easel and strolled away after them. Was it the motoring, I wondered, which had prompted her half-wistful question, or had I been wise too late? Arthur had been very confident. So much that he had said had carried with it a certain ring of truth. Youth and the temperament of youth were surely irresistible. Like calls to like across the garden of spring flowers with a cry which no interloper can still, no wanderer of later years can stifle. Somehow it seemed to me just then that the sun had ceased to shine, and a touch of winter after all was lingering in the western breeze.... They disappeared round the pine plantation, Isobel leading by a few yards, her skirts blowing in the wind, running still with superb and untired grace. I climbed a bank to gain a better view of the finish, and became suddenly aware that I was not the only interested spectator of their struggle. About a hundred yards to my left a man was standing on the top of the same bank, a pair of field-glasses glued to his eyes, watching intently the spot where they might be expected to reappear. The sight of him took me by surprise. A few moments ago I could have sworn that there was not a human being within a mile of us. There was only one explanation of his appearance. He must have been concealed in the dry mossy ditch at the foot of the bank. It was possible, of course, that he might have been like us, a casual way-farer, and yet the suddenness of his appearance, the intentness of his watch, both had their effect upon me. I moved a few yards towards him, with what object I perhaps scarcely knew. A dry twig snapped beneath my feet. He became suddenly aware of my approach. Then, indeed, my suspicions took definite shape, for without a moment's hesitation the man turned and strode away in the opposite direction. I shouted to him. He took no notice. I shouted again, and he only increased his pace. I watched him disappear, and I no longer had any doubts at all. He was not in the least like a tramp, and his flight could bear but one interpretation. Isobel was not safe even here. We had been followed from London--we were being watched every hour. For the first time I began seriously to doubt what the end of these things might be. _ |
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