CHAPTER II.
JUDAEUS APELLA.
ON the stillest summer day did you ever see nature quite still, eventhat circumscribed nature that hems you round with densest trees, as youlounge on your rustic seat, in lazy contemplation, amid the shorn grassof your flower-beds, while all things are oppressed and stifled withheat and slumber? Look attentively, and you will see a little quiverlike a dying pulse, in the hanging flower-bells, and a light fainttremble in this leaf and that. Of nature, which is, being interpreted,life, the law is motion, and this law controls the moral as well as thephysical world. Thus it is that there is nowhere any such thing asabsolute repose, and everywhere we find change and action.
Over Malory, if anywhere, broods the spirit of repose. Buried in deepforest--fenced on one side by the lonely estuary--no town or villagelying beyond it; seaward the little old-world road that passes by it isquite forsaken by traffic. Even the sound of children's laughter andprattle is never heard there, and little but the solemn caw of the rooksand the baying of the night-dog. Yet chance was then invading that quietseclusion with an unexpected danger.
A gentleman driving that day to the "George Inn" at Cardyllian, from adistant station on the Great London line, and having picked up from hisdriver, a Cardyllian man, all he could about Malory, and an old Mrs.Mervyn who lived there, stopped suddenly at the corner of the old road,which, two miles below Cardyllian, turns off inland, and rambles withmany pleasant windings into the road that leads to Penruthyn Priory.
This gentleman, whose dress was in the cheap and striking style, andwhose jewellery was conspicuous, was high-shouldered, with a verydecided curve, though not exactly a hunch. He was small, with ratherlong arms. His hair, whiskers, and beard were glossy black, and hisfeatures Jewish. He switched and twirled a black walking-cane, withsilver knobs on it, in his hand, and he had two or three rings on hisfingers.
His luggage had gone on to the "George," and whenever opportunityoccurred along that solitary road he renewed his inquiries aboutMalory, with a slight peculiarity of accent which the unsophisticatedrustics in that part of the world had never heard before.
By this time it was evening, and in the light of the approaching sunset,he might now, as the view of the sea and the distant mountains opened,have enjoyed a pleasure for which, however, he had no taste; theseevening glows and tints were to him but imperfect light, and he lookedalong the solemn and shadowy hills as he would have run his eye alongthe shops in Cheapside--if with any interest, simply to amuse himselfwith a calculation of what they might be worth in money.
He was now passing the pretty church-yard of Llanderris. The grayhead-stones and grass-grown graves brought home to him no passingthought of change and mortality; death was to him an arithmeticalformula by which he measured annuities and reversions and policies. Andnow he had entered the steep road that leads down with an irregularcurve to Malory.
He looked down upon the grand old wood. He had a smattering of the valueof timber, and remembered what a hit Rosenthal and Solomons had made oftheir purchase of the wood at East Milton, when the railway was about tobe made there; and what a nice bit of money they had made of theircontract for sleepers and all sorts of other things. Could not Jos.Larkin, or some better man, be found to get up a little branch line fromLlwynan to Cardyllian? His large mouth almost watered as he thought ofit; and how that eight or nine miles of rail would devour every inch oftimber that grew there--not a branch would be lost.
But now he was descending toward Malory, and the banks at the right handand the left shut out the view. So he began to descend the slope at hisleisure, looking up and about him and down at the worn road for materialfor thought, for his mind was bustling and barren.
The road is not four steps across. It winds steeply between high banks.Over these stoop and mingle in the perspective, the gray stems of tallash trees mantled in ivy, which here and there climbs thickly among theboughs, and makes a darker umbrage among the foliage of the trees.Beneath, ascending the steep banks, grow clumps of nettles, elder,hazel, and thorn. Only down the slope of the road can the passenger seeanything of the country it traverses, for the banks out-top him oneither side. The rains have washed its stones so bare, wearing a sort ofgulley in the centre, as to give it the character in some sort of aforest ravine.
The sallow, hatchet-faced man, with prominent black eyes, was walking upthis steep and secluded road. Those sharp eyes of his were busy. A wildbee hummed over his head, and he cut at it pleasantly with his stick,but it was out of reach, and he paused and eyed its unconscious flight,with an ugly smile, as if he owed it a grudge for having foiled him.There was little life in that secluded and dark track. He spied a smalldome-shaped black beetle stumbling through the dust and pebbles, acrossit.
The little man drew near and peered at it with his piercing eyes and apleasant grin. He stooped. The point of his pale nose was right over it.Across the desert the beetle was toiling. His path was a right line. Thelittle man looked across to see what he was aiming at, or where was hishome. There was nothing particular that he could perceive in the grassand weeds at the point witherward he was tending in a right line. Thebeetle sprawled and stumbled over a little bead of clay, recovered hisfeet and his direction, and plodded on in a straight line. The littleman put his stick, point downward, before him. The beetle rounded itcarefully, and plodded on inflexibly in the same direction. Then he ofthe black eyes and long nose knocked him gently in the face, and againand again, jerking him this way or that. Still, like a prize-fighter herallied between the rounds, and drove right on in his old line. Then thelittle man gave him a sharper knock, which sent him a couple of feetaway, on his back; right and left sprawled and groped the short legs ofthe beetle, but alas! in vain. He could not right himself. He tried tolurch himself over, but in vain. Now and then came a frantic gallop withhis little feet; it was beating the air. This was pleasant to the manwith the piercing eyes, who stooped over, smiling with his wide mouth,and showing his white fangs. I wonder what the beetle thought of hisluck--what he thought of it all. The paroxysms of hope, when his feetworked so hard, grew shorter. The intervals of despair and inaction grewlonger. The beetle was making up his mind that he must lie on his backand die slowly, or be crushed under a hoof, or picked up and swallowedby a wandering farm-yard fowl.
Though it was pleasant to witness his despair, the man with theprominent eyes tired of the sight, he gave him a poke under the back,and tumbled him up again on his feet, and watched him. The beetle seemeda little bothered for a while, and would have shaken himself I'm sure ifhe could. But he soon came to himself, turned in his old direction, and,as it seemed to the observer, marched stumbling on with indomitableperseverance toward the selfsame point. I know nothing of beetle habits.I can make no guess why he sought that particular spot. Was it merely afavourite haunt, or were there a little beetle brood, and a wifeawaiting him there? A strong instinct of some sort urged him, and a mostheroic perseverance.
And now I suppose he thought his troubles over, and that his journey wasabout surely to be accomplished. Alas! it will never be accomplished.There is an influence near which you suspect not. The distance islessening, the green grass, and dock leaves, and mallows, very near.Alas! there is no sympathy with your instinct, with the purpose of yourlife, with your labours and hopes. An inverted sympathy is _there_; asympathy with the difficulty--with "the Adversary"--with death. Thelittle man with the sharp black eyes brought the point of his stick nearthe beetle's back, having seen enough of his pilgrimage, and squelchedhim.
The pleasure of malice is curious. There are people who flavour theirmeals with their revenges, whose future is made interesting by the hopethat this or that person may come under their heel. Which ispleasantest, building castles in the air for ourselves, or dungeons inpandemonium for our enemies? It is well for one half of the human racethat the other has not the disposal of them. More rare, more grotesque,more exquisitely fiendish, is that sport with the mysteries of agony,that lust of torture, that constitute the desire and f
ruition of somemonstrous souls.
Now, having ended that beetle's brief life in eternal darkness, andreduced all his thoughts and yearnings to cypher, and dissolved hispersevering and resolute little character, never to be recombined, thisyoung gentleman looked up among the yellow leaves in which the birdswere chirping their evening gossip, and treated them to a capitalimitation of a wild cat, followed by a still happier one of ascreech-owl, which set all the sparrows in the ivy round twittering inpanic; and having sufficiently amused himself, the sun being now nearthe horizon, he bethought him of his mission to Malory. So on he marchedwhistling an air from an opera, which, I am bound to admit, he did withthe brilliancy and precision of a little flageolet, in so much that itamounted to quite a curiously pretty accomplishment, and you would havewondered how a gentleman with so unmistakeable a vein of the miscreantin him, could make such sweet and bird-like music.
A little boy riding a tired donkey into Cardyllian, pointed out to himthe gate of the old place, and with a jaunty step, twirling his cane,and whistling as he went, he reached the open space before the doorsteps.
The surly servant who happened to see him as he hesitated and gaped atthe windows, came forth, and challenged him with tones and looks thereverse of hospitable.
"Oh! Mrs. Mervyn?" said he; "well, she doesn't live here. Get ye roundthat corner there, and you'll see the steward's house with a hatch-doorto it, and you may ring the bell, and leave, d'ye mind, by the back way.You can follow the road by the rear o' the house."
So saying, he warned him off peremptorily with a flunkey's contempt fora mock gentleman, and the sallow man with the black eyes and beard, notat all put out by that slight treatment, for he had seen all sorts ofadventures, and had learned unaffectedly to despise contempt, walkedlistlessly round the corner of the old house, with a somewhatknock-kneed and ungainly stride, on which our bandy friend sneeredgruffly.