It was May morning, and Taffy made
one of the group gathered on the roof of Magdalen
Tower. In the groves below and across the river
meadows all the birds were singing together.
Beyond the glimmering suburbs, St. Clement’s
and Cowley St. John, over the dark rise by Bullingdon
Green, the waning moon seemed to stand still and wait,
poised on her nether horn. Below her the morning
sky waited, clean and virginal, letting her veil of
mist slip lower and lower until it rested in folds
upon Shotover. While it dropped a shaft of light
tore through it and smote flashing on the vane high
above Taffy’s head, turning the dark side of
the turrets to purple and casting lilac shadows on
the surplices of the choir. For a moment the
whole dewy shadow of the tower trembled on the western
sky, and melted and was gone as a flood of gold broke
on the eastward-turned faces. The clock below
struck five and ceased. There was a sudden baring
of heads; a hush; and gently, borne aloft on boys’
voices, clear and strong, rose the first notes of
the hymn
“Te Deum Patrem
colimus,
Te laudibus prosequimur,
Qui corpus
cibo reficis,
Coelesti mentem
gratia.”
In the pauses Taffy heard, faint and
far below, the noise of cowhorns blown by the street
boys gathered at the foot of the tower and beyond
the bridge. Close beside him a small urchin of
a chorister was singing away with the face of an ecstatic
seraph; whence that ecstasy arose the urchin would
have been puzzled to tell. There flashed into
Taffy’s brain the vision of the whole earth lauding
and adoring sun-worshippers and Christians,
priests and small children; nation after nation prostrating
itself and arising to join the chant “the
differing world’s agreeing sacrifice.”
Yes, it was Praise that made men brothers; Praise,
the creature’s first and last act of homage
to his Creator; Praise that made him kin with the angels.
Praise had lifted this tower; had expressed itself
in its soaring pinnacles; and he for the moment was
incorporate with the tower and part of its builder’s
purpose. “Lord, make men as towers!” he
remembered his father’s prayer in the field by
Tewkesbury, and at last he understood. “All
towers carry a lamp of some kind” why,
of course they did. He looked about him.
The small chorister’s face was glowing
“Triune Deus,
hominum
Salutis auctor
optime,
Immensum
hoc mysterium
Ovante lingua
canimus!”
Silence and then with a
shout the tunable bells broke forth, rocking the tower.
Someone seized Taffy’s college cap and sent
it spinning over the battlements. Caps?
For a second or two they darkened the sky like a
flock of birds. A few gowns followed, expanding
as they dropped, like clumsy parachutes. The
company all but a few severe dons and their
friends tumbled laughing down the ladder,
down the winding stair, and out into sunshine.
The world was pagan after all.
At breakfast Taffy found a letter
on his table, addressed in his mother’s hand.
As a rule she wrote twice a week, and this was not
one of the usual days for hearing from her. But
nothing was too good to happen that morning.
He snatched up the letter and broke the seal.
“My dearest boy,” it ran,
“I want you home at once to consult with me.
Something has happened (forgive me, dear, for not
preparing you; but the blow fell on me yesterday so
suddenly) something which makes it doubtful,
and more than doubtful, that you can continue at Oxford.
And something else they say has happened which
I will never believe in unless I hear it from my boy’s
lips. I have this comfort, at any rate, that
he will never tell me a falsehood. This is a
matter which cannot be explained by letter, and cannot
wait until the end of term. Come home quickly,
dear; for until you are here I can have no peace of
mind.”
So once again Taffy travelled homewards
by the night mail.
“Mother, it’s a lie!”
Taffy’s face was hot, but he
looked straight into his mother’s eyes.
She too was rosy-red: being ever a shamefast woman.
And to speak of these things to her own boy
“Thank God!” she murmured,
and her fingers gripped the arms of her chair.
“It’s a lie! Where is the girl?”
“She is in the workhouse, I
believe. I don’t know who spread it, or
how many have heard. But Honoria believes it.”
“Honoria! She cannot ”
He came to a sudden halt. “But, mother,
even supposing Honoria believes it, I don’t see ”
He was looking straight at her.
Her eyes sank. Light began to break in on him.
“Mother!”
Humility did not look up.
“Mother! Don’t tell me that she that
Honoria ”
“She made us promise your
father and me. . . . God knows it did no more
than repay what your father had suffered. . . .
Your future was everything to us. . . .”
“And I have been maintained
at Oxford by her money,” he said, pausing in
his bitterness on every word.
“Not by that only, Taffy!
There was your scholarship . . . and it was true
about my savings on the lace-work. . . .”
But he brushed her feeble explanations
away with a little gesture of impatience. “Oh
why, mother? Oh why?”
She heard him groan and stretched out her arms.
“Taffy, forgive me forgive
us! We did wrongly, I see I see it
as plain now as you. But we did it for your
sake.”
“You should have told me.
I was not a child. Yes, yes, you should have
told me.”
Yes; there lay the truth. They
had treated him as a child when he was no longer a
child. They had swathed him round with love,
forgetting that boys grow and demand to see with their
own eyes and walk on their own feet. To every
mother of sons there comes sooner or later the sharp
lesson which came to Humility that morning; and few
can find any defence but that which Humility stammered,
sitting in her chair and gazing piteously up at the
tall youth confronting her: “I did it for
your sake.” Be pitiful, oh accusing sons,
in that hour! For, terrible as your case may
be against them, your mothers are speaking the simple
truth.
Taffy took her hand. “The
money must be paid back, every penny of it.”
“Yes, dear.”
“How much?”
Humility kept a small account-book
in the work-box beside her. She opened the pages,
but, seeing his outstretched hand, gave it obediently
to Taffy, who took it to the window.
“Almost two hundred pounds.”
He knit his brows and began to drum with his fingers
on the window-pane. “And we must put the
interest at five per cent. . . . With my first
in Moderations I might find some post as an usher
in a small school. . . . There’s an agency
which puts you in the way of such things: I must
look up the address. . . . We will leave this
house, of course.”
“Must we?”
“Why of course we must.
We are living here by her favour. A cottage
will do only it must have four rooms, because
of grandmother. . . . I will step over and talk
with Mendarva. He may be able to give me a job.
It will keep me going, at any rate, until I hear
from the agency.”
“You forget that I have over
forty pounds a year or, rather, mother
has. The capital came from the sale of her farm,
years ago.”
“Did it?” said Taffy grimly.
“You forget that I have never been told.
Well, that’s good, so far as it goes.
But now I’ll step over and see Mendarva.
If only I could catch this cowardly lie somewhere
on my way!”
He kissed his mother, caught up his
cap, and flung out of the house. The sea breeze
came humming across the sandhills. He opened
his lungs to it, and it was wine to his blood; he
felt strong enough to slay dragons. “But
who could the liar be? Not Lizzie herself, surely!
Not ”
He pulled up short in a hollow of the towans.
“Not George?”
Treachery is a hideous thing; and
to youth so incomprehensibly hideous that it darkens
the sun. Yet every trusting man must be betrayed.
That was one of the lessons of Christ’s life
on earth. It is the last and severest test; it
kills many, morally, and no man who has once met and
looked it in the face departs the same man, though
he may be a stronger one.
“Not George?”
Taffy stood there so still that the
rabbits crept out and, catching sight of him, paused
in the mouths of their burrows. When at length
he moved on it was to take, not the path which wound
inland to Mendarva’s, but the one which led
straight over the higher moors to Carwithiel.
It was between one and two o’clock
when he reached the house and asked to see Mr. and
Mrs. George Vyell, They were not at home, the footman
said; had left for Falmouth the evening before to join
some friends on a yachting cruise. Sir Harry
was at home; was, indeed, lunching at that moment;
but would no doubt be pleased to see Mr. Raymond.
Sir Harry had finished his lunch,
and sat sipping his claret and tossing scraps of biscuits
to the dogs.
“Hullo, Raymond! thought
you were in Oxford. Sit down, my boy; delighted
to see you. Thomas, a knife and fork for Mr.
Raymond. The cutlets are cold, I’m afraid;
but I can recommend the cold saddle, and the ham it’s
a York ham. Go to the sideboard and forage for
yourself. I wanted company. My boy and
Honoria are at Falmouth yachting, and have left me
alone. What, you won’t eat? A glass
of claret, then, at any rate.”
“To tell the truth, Sir Harry,”
Taffy began awkwardly. “I’ve come
on a disagreeable business.”
Sir Harry’s face fell.
He hated disagreeable business. He flipped a
piece of biscuit at his spaniel’s nose and sat
back, crossing his legs.
“Won’t it keep?”
“To me it’s important.”
“Oh, fire away then: only help yourself
to the claret first.”
“A girl Lizzie Pezzack,
living over at Langona has had a child
born ”
“Stop a moment. Do I know
her? Ah, to be sure daughter
of old Pezzack, the light-keeper a brown-coloured
girl with her hair over her eyes. Well, I’m
not surprised. Wants money, I suppose?
Who’s the father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, but damn it
all! somebody knows.” Sir Harry
reached for the bottle and refilled his glass.
“The one thing I know is that
Honoria Mrs. George, I mean has
heard about it, and suspects me.”
Sir Harry lifted his glass and glanced
at him over the rim. “That’s the
devil. Does she, now?” He sipped.
“She hasn’t been herself for a day or
two this explains it. I thought it
was change of air she wanted. She’s in
the deuce of a rage, you bet.”
“She is,” said Taffy grimly.
“There’s no prude like
your young married woman. But it’ll blow
over, my boy. My advice to you is to keep out
of the way for a while.”
“But but it’s
a lie!” broke in the indignant Taffy. “As
far as I am concerned there’s not a grain of
truth in it!”
“Oh I beg your pardon,
I’m sure.” Here Honoria’s terrier
(the one which George had bought for her at Plymouth)
interrupted by begging for a biscuit, and Sir Harry
balanced one carefully on its nose. “On
trust good dog! What does the girl
say herself?”
“I don’t know. I’ve not seen
her.”
“Then, my dear fellow it’s
awkward, I admit but I’m dashed if
I see what you expect me to do.” The baronet
pulled out a handkerchief and began flicking the crumbs
off his knees.
Taffy watched him for a minute in
silence. He was asking himself why he had come.
Well, he had come in a hot fit of indignation, meaning
to face Honoria and force her to take back the insult
of her suspicion. But after all suppose
George were at the bottom of it? Clearly Sir
Henry knew nothing, and in any case could not be asked
to expose his own son. And Honoria? Let
be that she would never believe that he
had no proof, no evidence even this were
a pretty way of beginning to discharge his debt to
her! The terrier thrust a cold muzzle against
his hand. The room was very still. Sir
Harry poured out another glassful and held out the
decanter. “Come, you must drink; I insist!”
Taffy looked up. “Thank you, I will.”
He could now and with a clear conscience.
In those quiet moments he had taken the great resolution.
The debt should be paid back, and with interest;
not at five per cent., but at a rate beyond the creditor’s
power of reckoning. For the interest to be guarded
for her should be her continued belief in the man
she loved. Yes, but if George were innocent?
Why, then the sacrifice would be idle; that was all.
He swallowed the wine, and stood up.
“Must you be going? I
wanted a chat with you about Oxford,” grumbled
Sir Harry; but noting the lad’s face, how white
and drawn it was, he relented, and put a hand on his
shoulder. “Don’t take it too seriously,
my boy. It’ll blow over it’ll
blow over. Honoria likes you, I know.
We’ll see what the trollop says: and if
I get a chance of putting in a good word, you may
depend on me.”
He walked with Taffy to the door good,
easy man and waved a hand from the porch.
On the whole, he was rather glad than not to see his
young friend’s back.
From his smithy window Mendarva spied
Taffy coming along the road, and stepped out on the
green to shake hands with him.
“Pleased to see your face, my
son! You’ll excuse my not asking ’ee
inside; but the fact is” he jerked
his thumb towards the smithy ” we’ve
a-got our troubles in there.”
It came on our youth with something
of a shock that the world had room for any trouble
beside his own.
“‘Tis the Dane.
He went over to Truro yesterday to the wrastlin’,
an’ got thrawed. I tell’n there’s
no call to be shamed. ’Twas Luke the Wendron
fella did it in the treble play inside
lock backward, and as pretty a chip as ever I see.”
Mendarva began to illustrate it with foot and ankle,
but checked himself, and glanced nervously over his
shoulder. “Isn’ lookin’, I
hope? He’s in a terrible pore about it.
Won’t trust hissel’ to spake, and don’t
want to see nobody. But, as I tell’n, there’s
no call to be shamed; the fella took the belt in the
las’ round, and turned his man over like a tab.
He’s a proper angletwitch, that Wendron fella.
Stank ’pon en both ends, and he’ll rise
up in the middle and look at ’ee. There
was no one a patch on en but the Dane; and I’ll
back the Dane next time they clinch. ’Tis
a nuisance, though, to have’n like this with
a big job coming on, too, over to the light-house.”
Taffy looked steadily at the smith.
“What’s doing at the light-house?”
“Ha’n’t ’ee
heerd?” Mendarva began a long tale, the sum
of which was that the light-house had begun of late
to show signs of age, to rock at times in an ominous
manner. The Trinity House surveyor had been
down and reported, and Mendarva had the contract for
some immediate repairs. “But ’tis
patching an old kettle, my son. The foundations
be clamped down to the rock, and the clamps have worked
loose. The whole thing’ll have to come
down in the end; you mark my words.”
“But, these repairs?”
Taffy interrupted: “You’ll be wanting
hands.”
“Why, o’ course.”
“And a foreman a clerk of the works ”
While Mendarva was telling his tale,
over a hill two miles to the westward a small donkey-cart
crawled for a minute against the sky-line and disappeared
beyond the ridge which hid the towans. An old
man trudged at the donkey’s head; and a young
woman sat in the cart with a bundle in her arms.
The old man trudged along so deep
in thought that when the donkey without rhyme or reason
came to a halt, half-way down the hill, he too halted,
and stood pulling a wisp of grey side-whiskers.
“Look here,” he said.
“You ent goin’ to tell? That’s
your las’ word, is it?”
The young woman looked down on the
bundle and nodded her head.
“There, that’ll do.
If you weant, you weant; I’ve tek’n ’ee
back, an’ us must fit and make the best o’t.
The cheeld’ll never be good for much born
lame like that. But ’twas to be, I s’pose.”
Lizzie sat dumb, but hugged the bundle closer.
“’Tis like a judgment.
If your mother’d been spared, ‘twudn’
have happened. But ’twas to be, I s’pose.
The Lord’s ways be past findin’ out.”
He woke up and struck the donkey across the rump.
“Gwan you! Gee up! What d’ee
mean by stoppin’ like that?”