The Weavers, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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At this moment of trial David was thinking of his uncle, Benn Claridge,
and of his last words fifteen years before when going once again to the
East, accompanied by the Muslim chief Ebn Ezra, who had come with him to
England on the business of his country. These were Benn Claridge's words:
"Love God before all, love thy fellow-man, and thy conscience will bring
thee safe home, lad."
"If he will not repent, there is but one way," said the shrill Elder.
"Let there be no haste," said Luke Claridge, in a voice that shook a
little in his struggle for self-control.
Another heretofore silent Elder, sitting beside John Fairley, exchanged
words in a whisper with him, and then addressed them. He was a very small
man with a very high stock and spreading collar, a thin face, and large
wide eyes. He kept his chin down in his collar, but spoke at the ceiling
like one blind, though his eyes were sharp enough on occasion. His name
was Meacham.
"It is meet there shall be time for sorrow and repentance," he said.
"This, I pray you all, be our will: that for three months David live
apart, even in the hut where lived the drunken chair-maker ere he
disappeared and died, as rumour saith--it hath no tenant. Let it be that
after to-morrow night at sunset none shall speak to him till that time be
come, the first day of winter. Till that day he shall speak to no man,
and shall be despised of the world, and--pray God--of himself. Upon the
first day of winter let it be that he come hither again and speak with
us."
On the long stillness of assent that followed there came a voice across
the room, from within a grey-and-white bonnet, which shadowed a delicate
face shining with the flame of the spirit within. It was the face of
Faith Claridge, the sister of the woman in the graveyard, whose soul was
"with the Lord," though she was but one year older and looked much
younger than her nephew, David.
"Speak, David," she said softly. "Speak now. Doth not the spirit move
thee?"
She gave him his cue, for he had of purpose held his peace till all had
been said; and he had come to say some things which had been churning in
his mind too long. He caught the faint cool sarcasm in her tone, and
smiled unconsciously at her last words. She, at least, must have reasons
for her faith in him, must have grounds for his defence in painful days
to come; for painful they must be, whether he stayed to do their will, or
went into the fighting world where Quakers were few and life composite of
things they never knew in Hamley.
He got to his feet and clasped his hands behind his back. After an
instant he broke silence.
"All those things of which I am accused, I did; and for them is asked
repentance. Before that day on which I did these things was there
complaint, or cause for it? Was my life evil? Did I think in secret that
which might not be done openly? Well, some things I did secretly. Ye
shall hear of them. I read where I might, and after my taste, many plays,
and found in them beauty and the soul of deep things. Tales I have read,
but a few, and John Milton, and Chaucer, and Bacon, and Montaigne, and
Arab poets also, whose books my uncle sent me. Was this sin in me?"
"It drove to a day of shame for thee," said the shrill Elder.
He took no heed, but continued: "When I was a child I listened to the
lark as it rose from the meadow; and I hid myself in the hedge that,
unseen, I might hear it sing; and at night I waited till I could hear the
nightingale. I have heard the river singing, and the music of the trees.
At first I thought that this must be sin, since ye condemn the human
voice that sings, but I could feel no guilt. I heard men and women sing
upon the village green, and I sang also. I heard bands of music. One
instrument seemed to me more than all the rest. I bought one like it, and
learned to play. It was the flute--its note so soft and pleasant. I
learned to play it--years ago--in the woods of Beedon beyond the hill,
and I have felt no guilt from then till now. For these things I have no
repentance."
"Thee has had good practice in deceit," said the shrill Elder.
Suddenly David's manner changed. His voice became deeper; his eyes took
on that look of brilliance and heat which had given Luke Claridge anxious
thoughts.
"I did, indeed, as the spirit moved me, even as ye have done."
"Blasphemer, did the spirit move thee to brawl and fight, to drink and
curse, to kiss a wanton in the open road? What hath come upon thee?"
Again it was the voice of the shrill Elder.
"Judge me by the truth I speak," he answered. "Save in these things my
life has been an unclasped book for all to read."
"Speak to the charge of brawling and drink, David," rejoined the little
Elder Meacham with the high collar and gaze upon the ceiling.
"Shall I not speak when I am moved? Ye have struck swiftly; I will draw
the arrow slowly from the wound. But, in truth, ye had good right to
wound. Naught but kindness have I had among you all; and I will answer.
Straightly have I lived since my birth. Yet betimes a torturing unrest of
mind was used to come upon me as I watched the world around us. I saw men
generous to their kind, industrious and brave, beloved by their fellows;
and I have seen these same men drink and dance and give themselves to
coarse, rough play like young dogs in a kennel. Yet, too, I have seen
dark things done in drink--the cheerful made morose, the gentle violent.
What was the temptation? What the secret? Was it but the low craving of
the flesh, or was it some primitive unrest, or craving of the soul,
which, clouded and baffled by time and labour and the wear of life, by
this means was given the witched medicament--a false freedom, a thrilling
forgetfulness? In ancient days the high, the humane, in search of cure
for poison, poisoned themselves, and then applied the antidote. He hath
little knowledge and less pity for sin who has never sinned. The day came
when all these things which other men did in my sight I did--openly. I
drank with them in the taverns--twice I drank. I met a lass in the way. I
kissed her. I sat beside her at the roadside and she told me her brief,
sad, evil story. One she had loved had left her. She was going to London.
I gave her what money I had--"
"And thy watch," said a whispering voice from the Elders' bench.
"Even so. And at the cross-roads I bade her goodbye with sorrow."
"There were those who saw," said the shrill voice from the bench.
"They saw what I have said--no more. I had never tasted spirits in my
life. I had never kissed a woman's lips. Till then I had never struck my
fellow-man; but before the sun went down I fought the man who drove the
lass in sorrow into the homeless world. I did not choose to fight; but
when I begged the man Jasper Kimber for the girl's sake to follow and
bring her back, and he railed at me and made to fight me, I took off my
hat, and there I laid him in the dust."
"No thanks to thee that he did not lie in his grave," observed the shrill
Elder.
"In truth I hit hard," was the quiet reply.
"How came thee expert with thy fists?" asked Elder Fairley, with the
shadow of a smile.
"A book I bought from London, a sack of corn, a hollow leather ball, and
an hour betimes with the drunken chair-maker in the hut by the lime-kiln
on the hill. He was once a sailor and a fighting man."
A look of blank surprise ran slowly along the faces of the Elders. They
were in a fog of misunderstanding and reprobation.
"While yet my father"--he looked at Luke Claridge, whom he had ever been
taught to call his father--"shared the great business at Heddington, and
the ships came from Smyrna and Alexandria, I had some small duties, as is
well known. But that ceased, and there was little to do. Sports are
forbidden among us here, and my body grew sick, because the mind had no
labour. The world of work has thickened round us beyond the hills. The
great chimneys rise in a circle as far as eye can see on yonder crests;
but we slumber and sleep."
"Enough, enough," said a voice from among the women. "Thee has a friend
gone to London--thee knows the way. It leads from the cross-roads!"
Faith Claridge, who had listened to David's speech, her heart panting,
her clear grey eyes--she had her mother's eyes--fixed benignly on him,
turned to the quarter whence the voice came. Seeing who it was--a widow
who, with no demureness, had tried without avail to bring Luke Claridge
to her--her lips pressed together in a bitter smile, and she said to her
nephew clearly:
"Patience Spielman hath little hope of thee, David. Hope hath died in
her."
A faint, prim smile passed across the faces of all present, for all knew
Faith's allusion, and it relieved the tension of the past half-hour. From
the first moment David began to speak he had commanded his hearers. His
voice was low and even; but it had also a power which, when put to sudden
quiet use, compelled the hearer to an almost breathless silence, not so
much to the meaning of the words, but to the tone itself, to the man
behind it. His personal force was remarkable. Quiet and pale ordinarily,
his clear russet-brown hair falling in a wave over his forehead, when
roused, he seemed like some delicate engine made to do great labours. As
Faith said to him once, "David, thee looks as though thee could lift
great weights lightly." When roused, his eyes lighted like a lamp, the
whole man seemed to pulsate. He had shocked, awed, and troubled his
listeners. Yet he had held them in his power, and was master of their
minds. The interjections had but given him new means to defend himself.
After Faith had spoken he looked slowly round.
"I am charged with being profane," he said. "I do not remember. But is
there none among you who has not secretly used profane words and, neither
in secret nor openly, has repented? I am charged with drinking. On one
day of my life I drank openly. I did it because something in me kept
crying out, 'Taste and see!' I tasted and saw, and know; and I know that
oblivion, that brief pitiful respite from trouble, which this evil
tincture gives. I drank to know; and I found it lure me into a new
careless joy. The sun seemed brighter, men's faces seemed happier, the
world sang about me, the blood ran swiftly, thoughts swarmed in my brain.
My feet were on the mountains, my hands were on the sails of great ships;
I was a conqueror. I understood the drunkard in the first withdrawal
begotten of this false stimulant. I drank to know. Is there none among
you who has, though it be but once, drunk secretly as I drank openly? If
there be none, then I am condemned."
"Amen," said Elder Fairley's voice from the bench. "In the open way by
the cross-roads I saw a woman. I saw she was in sorrow. I spoke to her.
Tears came to her eyes. I took her hand, and we sat down together. Of the
rest I have told you. I kissed her--a stranger. She was comely. And this
I know, that the matter ended by the cross-roads, and that by and
forbidden paths have easy travel. I kissed the woman openly--is there
none among you who has kissed secretly, and has kept the matter hidden?
For him I struck and injured, it was fair. Shall a man be beaten like a
dog? Kimber would have beaten me."
"Wherein has it all profited?" asked the shrill Elder querulously.
"I have knowledge. None shall do these things hereafter but I shall
understand. None shall go venturing, exploring, but I shall pray for
him."
"Thee will break thy heart and thy life exploring," said Luke Claridge
bitterly. Experiment in life he did not understand, and even Benn
Claridge's emigration to far lands had ever seemed to him a monstrous and
amazing thing, though it ended in the making of a great business in which
he himself had prospered, and from which he had now retired. He suddenly
realized that a day of trouble was at hand with this youth on whom his
heart doted, and it tortured him that he could not understand.
"By none of these things shall I break my life," was David's answer now.
For a moment he stood still and silent, then all at once he stretched out
his hands to them. "All these things I did were against our faith. I
desire forgiveness. I did them out of my own will; I will take up your
judgment. If there be no more to say, I will make ready to go to old
Soolsby's hut on the hill till the set time be passed."
There was a long silence. Even the shrill Elder's head was buried in his
breast. They were little likely to forego his penalty. There was a gentle
inflexibility in their natures born of long restraint and practised
determination. He must go out into blank silence and banishment until the
first day of winter. Yet, recalcitrant as they held him, their secret
hearts were with him, for there was none of them but had had happy
commerce with him; and they could think of no more bitter punishment than
to be cut off from their own society for three months. They were
satisfied he was being trained back to happiness and honour.
A new turn was given to events, however. The little wizened Elder Meacham
said: "The flute, friend--is it here?"
"I have it here," David answered.
"Let us have music, then."
"To what end?" interjected the shrill Elder.
"He hath averred he can play," drily replied the other. "Let us judge
whether vanity breeds untruth in him."
The furtive brightening of the eyes in the women was represented in the
men by an assumed look of abstraction in most; in others by a bland
assumption of judicial calm. A few, however, frowned, and would have
opposed the suggestion, but that curiosity mastered them. These watched
with darkening interest the flute, in three pieces, drawn from an inner
pocket and put together swiftly.
David raised the instrument to his lips, blew one low note, and then a
little run of notes, all smooth and soft. Mellowness and a sober
sweetness were in the tone. He paused a moment after this, and seemed
questioning what to play. And as he stood, the flute in his hands, his
thoughts took flight to his Uncle Benn, whose kindly, shrewd face and
sharp brown eyes were as present to him, and more real, than those of
Luke Claridge, whom he saw every day. Of late when he had thought of his
uncle, however, alternate depression and lightness of spirit had
possessed him. Night after night he had troubled sleep, and he had
dreamed again and again that his uncle knocked at his door, or came and
stood beside his bed and spoke to him. He had wakened suddenly and said
"Yes" to a voice which seemed to call to him.
Always his dreams and imaginings settled round his Uncle Benn, until he
had found himself trying to speak to the little brown man across the
thousand leagues of land and sea. He had found, too, in the past that
when he seemed to be really speaking to his uncle, when it seemed as
though the distance between them had been annihilated, that soon
afterwards there came a letter from him. Yet there had not been more than
two or three a year. They had been, however, like books of many pages,
closely written, in Arabic, in a crabbed characteristic hand, and full of
the sorrow and grandeur and misery of the East. How many books on the
East David had read he would hardly have been able to say; but something
of the East had entered into him, something of the philosophy of Mahomet
and Buddha, and the beauty of Omar Khayyam had given a touch of colour
and intellect to the narrow faith in which he had been schooled. He had
found himself replying to a question asked of him in Heddington, as to
how he knew that there was a God, in the words of a Muslim quoted by his
uncle: "As I know by the tracks in the sand whether a Man or Beast has
passed there, so the heaven with its stars, the earth with its fruits,
show me that God has passed." Again, in reply to the same question, the
reply of the same Arab sprang to his lips--"Does the Morning want a Light
to see it by?"
As he stood with his flute--his fingers now and then caressingly rising
and falling upon its little caverns, his mind travelled far to those
regions he had never seen, where his uncle traded, and explored.
Suddenly, the call he had heard in his sleep now came to him in this
waking reverie. His eyes withdrew from the tree at the window, as if
startled, and he almost called aloud in reply; but he realised where he
was. At last, raising the flute to his lips, as the eyes of Luke Claridge
closed with very trouble, he began to play.
Out in the woods of Beedon he had attuned his flute to the stir of
leaves, the murmur of streams, the song of birds, the boom and burden of
storm; and it was soft and deep as the throat of the bell-bird of
Australian wilds. Now it was mastered by the dreams he had dreamed of the
East: the desert skies, high and clear and burning, the desert sunsets,
plaintive and peaceful and unvaried--one lovely diffusion, in which day
dies without splendour and in a glow of pain. The long velvety tread of
the camel, the song of the camel-driver, the monotonous chant of the
river-man, with fingers mechanically falling on his little drum, the cry
of the eagle of the Libyan Hills, the lap of the heavy waters of the Dead
Sea down by Jericho, the battle-call of the Druses beyond Damascus, the
lonely gigantic figures at the mouth of the temple of Abou Simbel,
looking out with the eternal question to the unanswering desert, the
delicate ruins of moonlit Baalbec, with the snow mountains hovering
above, the green oases, and the deep wells where the caravans lay down in
peace--all these were pouring their influences on his mind in the little
Quaker village of Hamley where life was so bare, so grave.
The music he played was all his own, was instinctively translated from
all other influences into that which they who listened to him could
understand. Yet that sensuous beauty which the Quaker Society was so
concerned to banish from any part in their life was playing upon them
now, making the hearts of the women beat fast, thrilling them, turning
meditation into dreams, and giving the sight of the eyes far visions of
pleasure. So powerful was this influence that the shrill Elder twice
essayed to speak in protest, but was prevented by the wizened Elder
Meacham. When it seemed as if the aching, throbbing sweetness must surely
bring denunciation, David changed the music to a slow mourning cadence.
It was a wail of sorrow, a march to the grave, a benediction, a soft
sound of farewell, floating through the room and dying away into the
mid-day sun.
There came a long silence after, and David sat with unmoving look upon
the distant prospect through the window. A woman's sob broke the air.
Faith's handkerchief was at her eyes. Only one quick sob, but it had been
wrung from her by the premonition suddenly come that the brother--he was
brother more than nephew--over whom her heart had yearned had, indeed,
come to the cross-roads, and that their ways would henceforth divide. The
punishment or banishment now to be meted out to him was as nothing. It
meant a few weeks of disgrace, of ban, of what, in effect, was
self-immolation, of that commanding justice of the Society which no one
yet save the late Earl of Eglington had defied. David could refuse to
bear punishment, but such a possibility had never occurred to her or to
any one present. She saw him taking his punishment as surely as though
the law of the land had him in its grasp. It was not that which she was
fearing. But she saw him moving out of her life. To her this music was
the prelude of her tragedy.
A moment afterwards Luke Claridge arose and spoke to David in austere
tones: "It is our will that thee begone to the chair-maker's but upon the
hill till three months be passed, and that none have speech with thee
after sunset to-morrow even."
"Amen," said all the Elders.
"Amen," said David, and put his flute into his pocket, and rose to go.
CHAPTER III
BANISHED
The chair-maker's hut lay upon the north hillside about half-way between
the Meeting-house at one end of the village and the common at the other
end. It commanded the valley, had no house near it, and was sheltered
from the north wind by the hill-top which rose up behind it a hundred
feet or more. No road led to it--only a path up from the green of the
village, winding past a gulley and the deep cuts of old rivulets now over
grown by grass or bracken. It got the sun abundantly, and it was
protected from the full sweep of any storm. It had but two rooms, the
floor was of sanded earth, but it had windows on three sides, east, west,
and south, and the door looked south. Its furniture was a plank bed, a
few shelves, a bench, two chairs, some utensils, a fireplace of stone, a
picture of the Virgin and Child, and of a cardinal of the Church of Rome
with a red hat--for the chair-maker had been a Roman Catholic, the only
one of that communion in Hamley. Had he been a Protestant his vices would
have made him anathema, but, being what he was, his fellow-villagers had
treated him with kindness.
After the half-day in which he was permitted to make due preparations,
lay in store of provisions, and purchase a few sheep and hens, hither
came David Claridge. Here, too, came Faith, who was permitted one hour
with him before he began his life of willing isolation. Little was said
as they made the journey up the hill, driving the sheep before them, four
strong lads following with necessities--flour, rice, potatoes, and
suchlike.
Arrived, the goods were deposited inside the hut, the lads were
dismissed, and David and Faith were left alone. David looked at his
watch. They had still a handful of minutes before the parting. These flew
fast, and yet, seated inside the door, and looking down at the village
which the sun was bathing in the last glowing of evening, they remained
silent. Each knew that a great change had come in their hitherto
unchanging life, and it was difficult to separate premonition from
substantial fact. The present fact did not represent all they felt,
though it represented all on which they might speak together now.
Looking round the room, at last Faith said: "Thee has all thee needs,
David? Thee is sure?"
He nodded. "I know not yet how little man may need. I have lived in
plenty."
At that moment her eyes rested on the Cloistered House.
"The Earl of Eglington would not call it plenty." A shade passed over
David's face. "I know not how he would measure. Is his own field so
wide?"
"The spread of a peacock's feather."
"What does thee know of him?" David asked the question absently.
"I have eyes to see, Davy." The shadows from that seeing were in her eyes
as she spoke, but he did not observe them.
"Thee sees but with half an eye," she continued. "With both mine I have
seen horses and carriages, and tall footmen, and wine and silver, and
gilded furniture, and fine pictures, and rolls of new carpet--of Uncle
Benn's best carpets, Davy--and a billiard-table, and much else."
A cloud slowly gathered over David's face, and he turned to her with an
almost troubled surprise. "Thee has seen these things--and how?"
"One day--thee was in Devon--one of the women was taken ill. They sent
for me because the woman asked it. She was a Papist; but she begged that
I should go with her to the hospital, as there was no time to send to
Heddington for a nurse. She had seen me once in the house of the
toll-gate keeper. Ill as she was, I could have laughed, for, as we went
in the Earl's carriage to the hospital-thirty miles it was--she said she
felt at home with me, my dress being so like a nun's. It was then I saw
the Cloistered House within and learned what was afoot."
"In the Earl's carriage indeed--and the Earl?"
"He was in Ireland, burrowing among those tarnished baubles, his titles,
and stripping the Irish Peter to clothe the English Paul."
"He means to make Hamley his home? From Ireland these furnishings come?"
"So it seems. Henceforth the Cloistered House will have its doors flung
wide. London and all the folk of Parliament will flutter along the dunes
of Hamley."
"Then the bailiff will sit yonder within a year, for he is but a starved
Irish peer."
"He lives to-day as though he would be rich tomorrow. He bids for fame
and fortune, Davy."
"'Tis as though a shirtless man should wear a broadcloth coat over a
cotton vest."
"The world sees only the broadcloth coat. For the rest--"
"For the rest, Faith?"
"They see the man's face, and--"
His eyes were embarrassed. A thought had flashed into his mind which he
considered unworthy, for this girl beside him was little likely to dwell
upon the face of a renegade peer, whose living among them was a constant
reminder of his father's apostasy. She was too fine, dwelt in such high
spheres, that he could not think of her being touched by the glittering
adventures of this daring young member of Parliament, whose book of
travels had been published, only to herald his understood determination
to have office in the Government, not in due time, but in his own time.
What could there be in common between the sophisticated Eglington and
this sweet, primitively wholesome Quaker girl?