The Literary Sense

"Have a lift?" asked the driver.

There was something subtly coercive in the absolute carelessness of the tone. There was the hearer on foot – here was the speaker in a cart. She being on foot and he on wheels, it was natural that he should offer her a lift in his cart – it was a greengrocer's cart. She could see celery, cabbages, a barrel or two, and the honest blue eyes of the man who drove it – the man who, seeing a fellow creature at a disadvantage, instantly offered to share such odds as Fate had allotted to him in life's dull handicap.

The sudden new impossible situation appealed to her. If lifts were offered – well – that must mean that lifts were generally accepted. In Rome one does as Rome does. In Derbyshire, evidently, a peacock crested toque might ride, unreproved by social criticism, in a greengrocer's cart. A tea-tray on wheels it seemed to her.

She was a born actress; she had that gift of throwing herself at a moment's notice into a given part which in our silly conventional jargon we nickname tact.

"Thank you," she said, "I should like it very much."

The box on which he arranged a seat for her contained haddocks. He cushioned it with a sack and his own shabby greatcoat, and lent her a thick rough hand for the mounting.

"Which way were you going?" he asked, and his voice was not the soft Peak sing-song – but something far more familiar.

"I was only going for a walk," she said, "but it's much nicer to drive. I wasn't going anywhere. Only I want to get back to Buxton some time."

"I live there," said he. "I must be home by five. I've a goodish round to do. Will five be soon enough for you?"

"Quite," she said, and considered within herself what rôle it would be kindest, most tactful, most truly gentlewomanly to play. She sought to find, in a word, the part to play that would best please the man who was with her. That was what she had always tried to find. With what success let those who love her tell.

"I mustn't seem too clever," she said to herself; "I must just be interested in what he cares about. That's true politeness: mother always said so."

So she talked of the price of herrings and the price of onions, and of trade, and of the difficulty of finding customers who had at once appreciation and a free hand.

When he drew up in some lean grey village, or at the repellent gates of some isolated slate-roofed house, he gave her the reins to hold, while he, with his samples of fruit and fish laid out on basket lids, wooed custom at the doors.

She experienced a strangely crescent interest in his sales.

Between the sales they talked. She found it quite easy, having swept back and penned in the major part of her knowledges and interests, to leave a residuum that was quite enough to meet his needs.

As the chill dusk fell in cloudy folds over the giant hill shoulders and the cart turned towards home, she shivered.

"Are you cold?" he asked solicitously. "The wind strikes keen down between these beastly hills."

"Beastly?" she repeated. "Don't you think they're beautiful?"

"Yes," he said, "of course I see they're beautiful – for other folks, but not for me. What I like is lanes an' elm trees and farm buildings with red tiles and red walls round fruit gardens – and cherry orchards and thorough good rich medders up for hay, and lilac bushes and bits o' flowers in the gardens, same what I was used to at home."

She thrilled to the homely picture.

"Why, that's what I like too!" she said. "These great hills – I don't see how they can feel like home to anyone. There's a bit of an orchard – one end of it is just a red barn wall – and there are hedges round, and it's all soft warm green lights and shadows – and thrushes sing like mad. That's home!"

He looked at her.

"Yes," he said slowly, "that's home."

"And then," she went on, "the lanes with the high green hedges, dog-roses and brambles and may bushes and traveller's joy – and the grey wooden hurdles, and the gates with yellow lichen on them, and the white roads and the light in the farm windows as you come home from work – and the fire – and the smell of apples from the loft."

"Yes," he said, "that's it – I'm a Kentish man myself. You've got a lot o' words to talk with."

When he put her down at the edge of the town she went to rejoin her nurse feeling that to one human being, at least, she had that day been the voice of the home-ideal, and of all things sweet and fair. And, of course, this pleased her very much.

Next morning she woke with the vague but sure sense of something pleasant to come. She remembered almost instantly. She had met a man on whom it was pleasant to smile, and whom her smiles and her talk pleased. And she thought, – quite honestly, – that she was being very philanthropic and lightening a dull life.

She wrote a long loving letter to John, did a little shopping, and walked out along a road. It was the road by which he had told her that he would go the next day. He overtook her and pulled up with a glad face, that showed her the worth of her smiles and almost repaid it.

"I was wondering if I'd see you," he said; "was you tired yesterday? It's a fine day to-day."

"Isn't it glorious!" she returned, blinking at the pale clear sun.

"It makes everything look a heap prettier, doesn't it? Even this country that looks like as if it had had all the colour washed out of it in strong soda and suds."

"Yes," she said. And then he spoke of yesterday's trade – he had done well; and of the round he had to go to-day. But he did not offer her a lift.

"Won't you give me a drive to-day?" she asked suddenly. "I enjoyed it so much."

"Will you?" he cried, his face lighting up as he moved to arrange the sacks. "I didn't like to offer. I thought you'd think I was takin' too much on myself. Come up – reach me your hand. Right oh!"

The cart clattered away.

"I was thinking ever since yesterday when I see you how is it you can think o' so many words all at once. It's just as if you was seeing it all – the way you talked about the red barns and the grey gates and all such."

"I do see it," she said, "inside my mind, you know. I can see it all as plainly as I see these great cruel hills."

"Yes," said he, "that's just what they are – they're cruel. And the fields and woods is kind – like folks you're friends with."

She was charmed with the phrase. She talked to him, coaxing him to make new phrases. It was like teaching a child to walk.

He told her about his home. It was a farm in Kent – "red brick with the glorydyjohn rose growin' all up over the front door – so that they never opened it."

"The paint had stuck it fast," said he, "it was quite a job to get it open to get father's coffin out. I scraped the paint off then, and oiled the hinges, because I knew mother wouldn't last long. And she didn't neither."

Then he told her how there had been no money to carry on the fruit-growing, and how his sister had married a greengrocer at Buxton, and when everything went wrong he had come to lend a hand with their business.

"And now I takes the rounds," said he; "it's more to my mind nor mimming in the shop and being perlite to ladies."

"You're very polite to me," she said.

"Oh, yes," he said, "but you're not a lady – leastways, I'm sure you are in your 'art – but you ain't a regular tip-topper, are you, now?"

"Well, no," she said, "perhaps not that."

It piqued her that he should not have seen that she was a lady – and yet it pleased her too. It was a tribute to her power of adapting herself to her environment.

The cart rattled gaily on – he talked with more and more confidence; she with a more and more pleased consciousness of her perfect tact. As they went a beautiful idea came to her. She would do the thing thoroughly – why not? The episode might as well be complete.

"I wish you'd let me help you to sell the things," she said. "I should like it."

"Wouldn't you be above it?" he asked.

"Not a bit," she answered gaily. "Only I must learn the prices of things. Tell me. How much are the herrings?"

He told her – and at the first village she successfully sold seven herrings, five haddocks, three score of potatoes, and so many separate pounds of apples that she lost count.

He was lavish of his praises.

"You might have been brought up to it from a girl," he said, and she wondered how old he thought she was then.

She yawned no more over dull novels now – Buxton no longer bored her. She had suddenly discovered a new life – a new stage on which to play a part, her own ability in mastering which filled her with the pleasure of a clever child, or a dog who has learned a new trick. Of course, it was not a new trick; it was the old one.

It was impossible not to go out with the greengrocer every day. What else was there to do? How else could she exercise her most perfectly developed talent – that of smiling on people till they loved her? We all like to do that which we can do best. And she never felt so contented as when she was exercising this incontestable talent of hers. She did not know the talent for what it was. She called it "being nice to people."

So every day saw her, with roses freshening in her cheeks, driving over the moors in the wheeled tea-tray. And now she sold regularly. One day he said —

"What a wife you'd make for a business chap!" But even that didn't warn her, because she happened to be thinking of Jack – and she thought how good a wife she meant to be to him. He was a "business chap" too.

"What are you really – by trade, I mean?" he said on another occasion.

"Nothing in particular. What did you think I was?" she said.

"Oh – I dunno – I thought a lady's maid, as likely as not, or maybe in the dressmaking. You aren't a common sort – anyone can see that."

Again pique and pleasure fought in her.

She never so much as thought of telling him that she was married. She saw no reason for it. It was her rôle to enter into his life, not to dazzle him with visions of hers.

At last that happened which was bound to happen. And it happened under the shadow of a great rock, in a cleft, green-grown and sheltered, where the road runs beside the noisy, stony, rapid, unnavigable river.

He had drawn the cart up on the grass, and she had got down and was sitting on a stone eating sandwiches, for her nurse had persuaded her to take her lunch with her so as to spend every possible hour on these life-giving moors. He had eaten bread and cheese standing by the horse's head. It was a holiday. He was not selling fish and vegetables. He was in his best, and she had never liked him so little. As she finished her last dainty bite he threw away the crusts and rinds of his meal and came over to her.

"Well," he said, with an abrupt tenderness that at once thrilled and revolted her, "don't you think it's time as we settled something betwixt us?"

"I don't know what you mean," she said. But, quite suddenly and terribly, she did.

"Why," he said, "I know well enough you're miles too good for a chap like me – but if you don't think so, that's all right. And I tell you straight, you're the only girl I ever so much as fancied."

"Oh," she breathed, "do you mean – "

"You know well enough what I mean, my pretty," he said; "but if you want it said out like in books, I've got it all on my tongue. I love every inch of you, and your clever ways, and your pretty talk. I haven't touched a drop these eight months – I shall get on right enough with you to help me – and we'll be so happy as never was. There ain't ne'er a man in England'll set more store by his wife nor I will by you, nor be prouder on her. You shan't do no hard work – I promise you that. Only just drive out with me and turn the customers round your finger. I don't ask no questions about you nor your folks. I know you're an honest girl, and I'd trust you with my head. Come, give me a kiss, love, and call it a bargain."

She had stood up while he was speaking, but she literally could not find words to stop the flow of his speech. Now she shrank back and said, "No – no!"

"Don't you be so shy, my dear," he said. "Come – just one! And then I'll take you home and interduce you to my sister. You'll like her. I've told her all about you."

Waves of unthinkable horror seemed to be closing over her head. She struck out bravely, and it seemed as though she were swimming for her life.

"No," she cried, "it's impossible! You don't understand! You don't know!"

"I know you've been keeping company with me these ten days," he said, and his voice had changed. "What did you do it for if you didn't mean nothing by it?"

"I didn't know," she said wretchedly. "I thought you liked being friends."

"If it's what you call 'friends,' being all day long with a chap, I don't so call it," he said. "But come – you're playing skittish now, ain't you? Don't tease a chap like this. Can't you see I love you too much to stand it? I know it sounds silly to say it – but I love you before all the world – I do – my word I do!"

He held out his arms.

"I see – I see you do," she cried, all her tact washed away by this mighty sea that had suddenly swept over her. "But I can't. I'm – I'm en – I'm promised to another young man."

"I wonder what he'll say to this," he said slowly.

"I'm so – so sorry," she said; "I'd no idea – "

"I see," he said, "you was just passing the time with me – and you never wanted me at all. And I thought you did. Get in, miss. I'll take you back to the town. I've just about had enough holiday for one day."

"I am so sorry," she kept saying. But he never answered.

"Do forgive me!" she said at last. "Indeed, I didn't mean – "

"Didn't mean," said he, lashing up the brown horse; "no – and it don't matter to you if I think about you and want you every day and every night so long as I live. It ain't nothing to you. You've had your fun. And you've got your sweetheart. God, I wish him joy of you!"

"Ah – don't," she said, and her soft voice even here, even now, did not miss its effect. "I do like you very, very much – and – "

She had never failed. She did not fail now. Before they reached the town he had formally forgiven her.

"I don't suppose you meant no harm," he said grudgingly; "though coming from Kent you ought to know how it is about walking out with a chap. But you say you didn't, and I'll believe you. But I shan't get over this, this many a long day, so don't you make no mistake. Why, I ain't thought o' nothing else but you ever since I first set eyes on you. There – don't you cry no more. I can't abear to see you cry."

He was blinking himself.

Outside the town he stopped.

"Good-bye," he said. "I haven't got nothing agin you – but I wish to Lord above I'd never seen you. I shan't never fancy no one else after you."

"Don't be unhappy," she said. And then she ought to have said good-bye. But the devil we call the force of habit would not let her leave well alone.

"I want to give you something," she said; "a keepsake, to show I shall always be your friend. Will you call at the house where I'm staying this evening at eight? I'll have it ready for you. Don't think too unkindly of me! Will you come?"

He asked the address, and said "Yes." He wanted to see her – just once again, and he would certainly like the keepsake.

She went home and looked out a beautiful book of Kentish photographs. It was a wedding present, and she had brought it with her to solace her in her exile by pictures of the home-land. Her unconscious thought was something like this: "Poor fellow; poor, poor fellow! But he behaved like a gentleman about it. I suppose there is something in the influence of a sympathetic woman – I am glad I was a good influence."

She bathed her burning face, cooled it with soft powder, and slipped into a tea-gown. It was a trousseau one of rich, heavy, yellow silk and old lace and fur. She chose it because it was warm, and she was shivering with agitation and misery. Then she went and sat with the old nurse, and a few minutes before eight she ran out and stood by the front door so as to open it before he should knock. She achieved this.

"Come in," she said, and led him into the lodging-house parlour and closed the door.

"It was good of you to come," she said, taking the big, beautiful book from the table. "This is what I want you to take, just to remind you that we're friends."

She had forgotten the tea-gown. She was not conscious that the accustomed suavity of line, the soft richness of texture influenced voice, gait, smile, gesture. But they did. Her face was flushed after her tears, and the powder, which she had forgotten to dust off, added the last touch to her beauty.

He took the book, but he never even glanced at the silver and tortoise-shell of its inlaid cover. He was looking at her, and his eyes were covetous and angry.

"Are you an actress, or what?"

"No," she said, shrinking. "Why?"

"What the hell are you, then?" he snarled furiously.

"I'm – I'm – a – "

The old nurse, scared by the voice raised beyond discretion, had dragged herself to the door of division between her room and the parlour, and now stood clinging to the door handle.

"She's a lady, young man," said the nurse severely; "and her aunt's a lady of title, and don't you forget it!"

"Forget it," he cried, with a laugh that Jack's wife remembers still; "she's a lady, and she's fooled me this way? I won't forget it, nor she shan't neither! By God, I'll give her something to forget!"

With that he caught the silken tea-gown and Jack's trembling wife in his arms and kissed her more than once. They were horrible kisses, and the man smelt of onions and hair-oil.

"And I loved her – curse her!" he cried, flinging her away, so that she fell against the arm of the chair by the fire.

He went out, slamming both doors. She had softened and bewitched him to the forgiving of the outrage that her indifference was to his love. The outrage of her station's condescension to his was unforgivable.

She went back to her Jack next day. She was passionately glad to see him. "Oh, Jack," she said, "I'll never, never go away from you again!"

But the greengrocer from Kent reeled down the street to the nearest public-house. At closing time he was telling, in muffled, muddled speech, the wondrous tale, how his girl was a real lady, awfully gone on him, pretty as paint, and wore silk dresses every day.

"She's a real lady – she is," he said.

"Ay!" said the chucker out, "we know all about them sort o' ladies. Time, please!"

"I tell you she is – her aunt's a lady of title, and the gal's that gone on me I expect I'll have to marry her to keep her quiet."

"I'll have to chuck you out to keep you quiet," returned the other. "Come on – outside!"

THE BRUTE

THE pearl of the dawn was not yet dissolved in the gold cup of the sunshine, but in the northwest the dripping opal waves were ebbing fast to the horizon, and the sun was already half risen from his couch of dull crimson. She leaned out of her window. By fortunate chance it was a jasmine-muffled lattice, as a girl's window should be, and looked down on the dewy stillness of the garden. The cloudy shadows that had clung in the earliest dawn about the lilac bushes and rhododendrons had faded like grey ghosts, and slowly on lawn and bed and path new black shadows were deepening and intensifying.

She drew a deep breath. What a picture! The green garden, the awakened birds, the roses that still looked asleep, the scented jasmine stars! She saw and loved it all. Nor was she unduly insensible to the charm of the central figure, the girl in the white lace-trimmed gown who leaned her soft arms on the window-sill and looked out on the dawn with large dark eyes. Of course, she knew that her eyes were large and dark, also that her hair was now at its prettiest, rumpled and tumbled from the pillow, and far prettier so than one dared to allow it to be in the daytime. It seemed a pity that there should be no one in the garden save the birds, no one who had awakened thus early just that he might gather a rose and cover it with kisses and throw it up to the window of his pretty sweetheart. She had but recently learned that she was pretty. It was on the evening after the little dance at the Rectory. She had worn red roses at her neck, and when she had let down her hair she had picked up the roses from her dressing-table and stuck them in the loose, rough, brown mass, and stared into the glass till she was half mesmerised by her own dark eyes. She had come to herself with a start, and then she had known quite surely that she was pretty enough to be anyone's sweetheart. When she was a child a well-meaning aunt had told her that as she would never be pretty or clever she had better try to be good, or no one would love her. She had tried, and she had never till that red-rose day doubted that such goodness as she had achieved must be her only claim to love. Now she knew better, and she looked out of her window at the brightening sky and the deepening shadows. But there was no one to throw her a rose with kisses on it.

"If I were a man," she said to herself, but in a very secret shadowy corner of her inmost heart, and in a wordless whisper, "if I were a man, I would go out this minute and find a sweetheart. She should have dark eyes, too, and rough brown hair, and pink cheeks."

In the outer chamber of her mind she said briskly —

"It's a lovely morning. It's a shame to waste it indoors. I'll go out."

The sun was fully up when she stole down through the still sleeping house and out into the garden, now as awake as a lady in full dress at the court of the King.

The garden gate fell to behind her, and the swing of her white skirts went down the green lane. On such a morning who would not wear white? She walked with the quick grace of her nineteen years, and as she went fragments of the undigested poetry that had been her literary diet of late swirled in her mind —

"With tears and smiles from heaven again,The maiden spring upon the plainCame in a sunlit fall of rain,"

and so on, though this was July, and not spring at all. And —

"A man had given all other blissAnd all his worldly work for this,To waste his whole heart in one kissUpon her perfect lips."

Her own lips were not perfect, yet, as lips went, they were well enough, and, anyway, kisses would not be wasted on them.

She went down the lane, full of the anxious trembling longing that is youth's unrecognised joy, and at the corner, where the lane meets the high white road, she met him. That is to say, she stopped short, as the whispering silence of the morning was broken by a sudden rattle and a heavy thud, not pleasant to hear. And he and his bicycle fell together, six yards from her feet. The bicycle bounded, and twisted, and settled itself down with bold, resentful clatterings. The man lay without moving.

Her Tennyson quotations were swept away. She ran to help.

"Oh, are you hurt?" she said. He lay quite still. There was blood on his head, and one arm was doubled under his back. What could she do? She tried to lift him from the road to the grass edge of it. He was a big man, but she did succeed in raising his shoulders, and freeing that right arm. As she lifted it, he groaned. She sat down in the dust of the road, and lowered his shoulders till his head lay on her lap. Then she tied her handkerchief round his head, and waited till someone should pass on the way to work. Three men and a boy came after the long half hour in which he lay unconscious, the red patch on her handkerchief spreading slowly, and she looking at him, and getting by heart every line of the pale, worn, handsome face. She spoke to him, she stroked his hair. She touched his white cheek with her finger-tips, and wondered about him, and pitied him, and took possession of him as a new and precious appanage of her life, so that when the labourers appeared, she said —

"He's very badly hurt. Go and fetch some more men and a hurdle, and the boy might run for the doctor. Tell him to come to the White House. It's nearest, and it may be dangerous to move him further."

"The 'Blue Lion' ain't but a furlong further, miss," said one of the men, touching his cap.

"It's much more than that," said she, who had but the vaguest notion of a furlong's length. "Do go and do what I tell you."