But at sound and touch of him all the softness seemed to go out of Sara. She seized him fiercely with hands that felt hard, and stared at him. She looked at his eyes and his hair and his pointed ears, and traced the curve of his wicked eyebrows with a finger that shook. Then she pulled him roughly to her and dragged his doublet away from his back so that she could look at it. . . . So fiercely did she pull that his doublet ripped and tore. . . . Diccon didn’t know what he had on his back but whatever it was it had an extraordinary effect upon Sara, for she picked him up and hugged him as though the hugging of Diccon was what she was born for.
Had Joyeuce or Dorothy hugged Diccon as Sara was hugging him he would have kicked, yelled, struggled and bitten, but from Sara he liked it. He wriggled himself comfortable on her lap, giggling contentedly, and a strange happiness stole over him. Her lap seemed to be made to be his throne. The hollow of her shoulder exactly fitted his head and her body was warm and soft about him. When Joyeuce and Dorothy cuddled him, Diccon never found them wholly satisfactory. Dorothy, though well upholstered, was hard, and Joyeuce, though soft, was inadequate; she was quite flat in front and her lap was so flimsy that it was apt to let you through. But this woman was just right. He nestled and cooed and crept closer, wriggling his bare toes in ecstasy.
Time stopped for them both. Sara rocked herself backwards and forwards, crooning a little song, and Diccon’s long lashes descended to his cheek.
They were disturbed by a discontented murmuring outside the tent and by the head of the dark man protruding through its flap. “Be quick and have done,” he whispered angrily to Sara. “Send the child away. These outside will not wait here forever.” Then he withdrew his head and they heard him swearing at the crowd to pacify it.
Diccon, indifferent though he had always been to the feelings of those about him, was yet acutely aware of every emotion that thrilled through Sara. He had felt her love and her joy and now he felt her terror. Their lovely unity was threatened. They had come together, fitting into each other as those fit who once were one body, and now the noisy world was surging up against their rosy shrine where were only the two of them in their unity; in another moment it would have broken in; the crude glare of full day would wash over the rosy light of babyhood, putting it out, and mother and son would be one no longer.
Sara leaped to her feet, panting. She dragged and pulled at the red curtains behind her until they tore and gave way, leaving a space through which she could creep, pulling Diccon after her. They crept under one of the booths behind the tent, crossed the grassy lane beyond before anyone had time to stop them, or even to notice them, and in a moment were running like the wind, Sara holding firmly to Diccon and Diccon to Baa.
It seemed to Diccon that strange sudden shapes came looming up against them, trying to stop them, people and dogs and booths and bales and boxes, but doubling and dodging with the skill that was native to them both they went on till presently the Fair was left behind them, meadow grass and flowers were under their feet and before their eyes was a smooth, slipping ribbon of shining river.
They dropped down behind a hawthorn bush to get their breath, though creatures of the wild as they were they were less blown than anyone else would have been, and they hugged each other again and laughed because they had outwitted the world that would have torn them away from each other.
“So they thought they could take you away from me, did they?” jeered Sara. “The fools and the thieves, that think to take a babe from his mother! Eh, but your skin is fair, little son, fair and smooth like milk, and the soles of your feet are soft as butter. You need the hot sun to burn you and the earth under your feet to make them hard like those of a man. Why did I leave you behind in that house instead of the other? I was a fool, a fool! I thought to make my son a gentleman and I lost the core out of my heart and the light out of my eyes!”
She spoke in a strange language that Diccon did not understand, a strange tempestuous language that was like the wind in the trees, but he saw that she reproached herself and he would not have it. He kissed away the angry rears on her cheek and pummeled her with his fists to bring her to her senses.
She came to then and saw that they were not safe yet. She swung Diccon on to her back, her green shawl bound round him to keep him steady, and tramped on, walking with a slow swinging stride that yet covered the ground amazingly quickly.
They crossed the river by a wooden bridge and turned to follow a path that wound along beside its further bank. Oxford was left behind them, a walled gray city set like an island in an emerald sea of green meadow, and Diccon looked over Sara’s shoulder at a world he did not know. He was not in the least frightened. Though all that he knew was left behind him in that gray city he felt nothing but a huge content. The hot sun blazed down on his head and the folds of the green shawl inclosed him like a pea in a pod. His head felt top-heavy with heat and happiness so that he laid it against his mother’s shoulder and went to sleep.
5.
When he woke up again he was lying on a heap of dried bracken in a little hut with Baa beside him. In the center of the hut a fire was burning under a black pot that swung over it from a tripod of sticks, the smoke coiling up to escape through a hole in the roof. . . . Some of it, that is, the rest of it spread through the hut in a blue haze like the mist of dreams that always seemed to hang over Diccon’s eyes when he first woke up.
For an awful moment he thought he had dreamed it all; the Fair, the splendid dark man and the glorious woman who had been made to be his throne; then he rubbed his fist in his green eyes to clear the dreams and the smoke away and saw through the blue haze an open doorway that held as in a picture frame a patch of blue sky, a few tufts of waving trees, and Sara and an old crone sitting side by side on the grass making baskets out of plaited rushes. They were talking softly together in that strange language and the rippling sound of their voices, the wind in the trees and the whisper of the flames on the hearth were a lullaby that nearly sent Diccon to sleep again.
He was jerked wide awake by a rustling in the big heap of bracken beside him. . . . Something was there, hiding under the bracken. . . . He pushed it aside, hoping for a cat like Tinker, and found himself looking straight into the eyes of a little boy of his own age; a dirty little fair-haired boy clothed in brown rags, with skin burned by sun and wind as golden brown as an acorn. In a paroxysm of shyness the little boy fell flat on his stomach and pulled the bracken over his head, but through it his eyes shone like two bright stars. Diccon also fell flat on his stomach, his head close to the little boy’s, and through the dry, sweet-smelling fronds the blue eyes and the green twinkled at each other. Then they began to laugh, wrinkling their noses and kicking their bare legs in the air. They laughed more and more, rolling over each other, pushing the bracken down each other’s necks and kicking and squeaking like a couple of puppies. They had come together at last and they were ecstatically happy. They had been born in the same hour on the same night, when all the stars were dancing. Their eyes had opened to moonlight and candlelight, heaven and earth shining together in welcome, and the first breaths they took were fragrant breaths that came blowing over the flowery earth. They had drunk the same mother’s milk from a gypsy’s breast and listened to the same songs crooned in their ears. They were fortunate children, born at full moon in the spring and dowered by the fairies with the gift of laughter, but never so fortunate as at this moment when they found each other.
When they were out of breath they rolled back to the bracken and sat curled up together, taking stock of each other, poking each other in the ribs and rubbing their heads together, establishing friendship as animals do by the contact of their bodies. Words were entirely unnecessary. They were part of each other, as Sara and Diccon were part of each other. Finally, as a mark of his esteem and to forge fast the bond between them, Diccon presented his foster brother with Baa. It was the first time in his life that he had ever given away something of his own, for hi
s sense of property was strong at this stage of his life and his acquisitiveness even stronger, and the tremendous renunciation made him feel quite queer, as though when he rooted Baa up out of his life a part of himself clung to the roots and was given with Baa to the other boy to become a part of him. . . . He had made a discovery. . . . Later in his life he was to be scolded for the recklessness of his giving and would reply laughing that he hated loneliness like the devil.
Sara came in to them and ladled some of the stew that simmered in the black pot into a wooden bowl. Then she too sat down on the bracken and fed them with a wooden spoon, while they cuddled up one on each side of her with their mouths open like those of expectant young birds.
It was a stew made of poached rabbit and stolen fowl, seasoned with onions and herbs and drowned in a sticky, mud-colored gravy. Diccon thought it was the most delicious food he had ever eaten and continued to gape for more long after the bowl was empty.
“Greedy rogues!” cried Sara, and lifted them both on her lap, one on each knee. . . . She did not love the blue eyed child who had been borne by another woman any the less because she had found the green eyed child who was her own. . . . The blue dreamy haze hung over the three of them, as the rosy glow in the tent had done when they were only two, shutting out the world’s clamor, and in quietness and peace they loved each other.
They sat there for a long time and would have been content to sit there forever, but the evening light was suddenly darkened and looking up they saw the figure of the dark man standing in the doorway, blocking out the sky. He was a very different man from the kindly creature who had chucked Diccon under the chin and thrown him good-humoredly through the flap of the tent. He had been drinking heavily and he was in a rage as complete, as abandoned and as royal as were the rages to which Diccon occasionally treated the household at Christ Church. He lurched through the door, strode over the fire and loomed like a thundercloud over Sara and her boys. After a moment of ominous silence the storm burst in such a torrent of abuse that the hut seemed to rock with it. It poured forth in the Romany language and Diccon could make neither head nor tail of it, though he gathered that Sara had done what she ought not and guessed that they should not have run away from the Fair. . . . But she seemed not to care. . . . She sat with her head tilted proudly back against the wall of the hut and her arms spread out one on each side of her to protect the small boys from the blows that would presently fall.
The blue eyed child shrank against her in terror but Diccon was highly interested. He had hitherto had experience of no one’s rages but his own, and of one’s own rages it is impossible to take an objective view. He gazed in fascination at the dark man’s scarlet face, where the veins stood out like rope, and at his eyes that were so hot that they seemed to have red flames burning in them, and at his beard that wagged up and down at every furious word he spoke. His anger seemed surging all about them like a great wind and his voice was like the roar of many waters. . . . Diccon thought it was grand and his whole being went out to the dark man in admiration.
But suddenly it was not so grand, for the dark man began to use his hands. He fell upon Sara first, shaking her and knocking her head back against the wall with a sickening thud. Then he turned towards Diccon, but Sara leaned over her son with a cry, protecting his body with her own. . . . Out of the tail of his eye Diccon saw the other little boy, who had had previous experience of this sort of thing, wriggle between the dark man’s legs and make a dash for it. . . . Then Sara’s protecting body blotted out his view of the door and he saw nothing but the folds of her green shawl.
But he seemed to be feeling in his own body the blows that were falling on hers and a red-hot rage seized him. He loved Sara, loved her with the first real love he had ever known, and he wouldn’t have her beaten. Struggling, he got himself free of her, seized hold of the dark man’s hand and bit it.
Then the dark man struck him. Diccon had never been struck. He had been whipped for his good, but that was a different thing from a blow given in anger. The world was suddenly a terrible cruel place and instead of his rage he was brimful of nothing but terror. He forgot Sara, forgot everything but his longing to escape from this place where they struck you. Sobbing and crying, with his arm pressed against the place on his head where the dark man had cruelly hit him, he dashed through the flames of the fire, through the blue haze of smoke that only a few minutes ago had seemed so lovely, out through the door into the open.
He ran on and on, sobbing as though his heart would break. He did not know where he was going but he knew what he wanted. . . . He wanted to get back to that world where voices were never raised in anger and where cruelty was a thing unknown. . . . He thought that if he went on running and running perhaps he would get there.
But gradually the wild world to which he belonged, and which had dealt so hardly with him, began to comfort him. The green grass stretched up to lay cool balm against his hot, scorched little legs, and beside him a blackbird flew, chucking in consternation. He began to be conscious of flowers in the grass lifting their faces in sorrow, and of scarlet hips and haws in the hedges that were lanterns to light his way. These things comforted him and he was sure he would soon be home.
So he was not surprised when he saw a stone building looming ahead of him. . . . That must be the Fair Gate. . . . Soon he would see Heatherthwayte, and the dear black face of Satan, and beyond them he would see his father in his long black gown and Joyeuce with her shining head.
But when he got there it was not the Fair Gate but a little gray church standing under the trees. For a moment he stopped, sick with disappointment, then his fear drove him to run round it, looking for some place where he could hide himself.
He found it in a porch all overgrown with honeysuckle, with a wooden bench running along one side of it. He climbed upon the bench, curled himself up in the corner and cried and cried.
Chapter 10: The Holy Well
But you, fair maids, at length this true shall find,
That his right badge is but worn in the heart;
Dumb swans, not chattering pies, do lovers prove;
They love indeed who quake to say they love.
PHILIP SIDNEY.
1.
TO Faithful the summer holidays brought a deeper intimacy with the Leighs. He lived with them and became one with them in a way he had not been before. He began to know them all much better; they ceased to be just “the Leighs” and became individual people all of whom meant something different to him and called out something different in him. We are never quite the same person with everyone, he found; the clash of personality upon personality strikes out a different flame in every case and those we love the best are those whose impact upon us creates most light and warmth. And it was Grace, Faithful discovered, who did this for him. When he was with her the world was a warm place and so light that he forgot, as we do at midday when the sun is shining, that he had come from the dark and was journeying towards the dark again.
In the mornings he worked with Giles, or was coached by Canon Leigh, but after the early dinner he was with Grace and she taught him the things that she knew; very important instruction but of a different type from that given by Canon Leigh and Giles.
For unlike Joyeuce Grace was a born housewife. She had no need to force unwilling feet into the path of duty for the things that she had to do were the things that she liked to do. Anything to do with the running of a house, even the unsavory business of candle making, was a joy to her, and she knew of no greater bliss than the preparing of the fruits of the earth for their reception by the stomach of man. Her creed was simple. God made man that he might eat, and made woman from the rib of a man that she might prepare that which he ate. To Grace the whole world was a great larder stored with animals, birds, fruits, vegetables and nuts that had been created for purposes of consumption only; and above it all God the great housekeeper sat in His heaven, brooding benignly through the centur
ies over spread tables whose multiplicity and variety it baffled the powers of man to count or describe.
The problems that tormented Joyeuce, such as the purpose for which man ate, and why it was necessary to despoil the beauty of the world that he might eat, and how one was to satisfy the hunger of the soul that inhabited the well-fed body, troubled Grace not at all. Had she thought about these things she would have said that man ate to eat, and that corn looked nicer made into bread than getting knocked about outside in the rain, and that personally the longings of her soul were satisfied when her cake rose nicely and the joint was done to a turn. . . . The fact of the matter was that Grace was a plump child and the spirit within her body was so well cushioned that the shocks and jars of life had not hitherto waked it up to ask how, why, wherefore?
Yet being human she had her troubles and the chief of these was the non-recognition of her talents by the household. She was far more capable than Joyeuce and yet Joyeuce insisted upon treating her as though she knew nothing. She was able to tell her family exactly what to do in every problem that beset them but yet they never asked her advice, and if she gave it unasked they laughed. She was thirteen, and grown up, yet they all insisted upon treating her as though she was still a baby. . . . All but Faithful.
His respect for her talents was balm to her. Unused as he was to the comfort and order of a well-run household the things that she did for the welfare of them all seemed to him amazing, and he set himself in great humility to learn what she could teach him, so that his clumsy fingers could help her in the thousand and one tasks that seemed to him likely to break the back of so little a lady. She joyfully taught him all she knew, provided it had nothing to do with the mysteries of cooking, that no man should be allowed to inquire into lest he discover that they are not so difficult after all, and woman fall in his estimation.