There was another light down the pixy-path, very steady and soft. Had it
been blue it might have been a thing of the bog, looking for the body it
had thrown away, but it was white, and it flickered hardly at all, for
the night was smothered up and the winds were slumbering. It came up the
path with a kind of gliding rather terrible and there was not a sound
around it. The master was approaching in the night. Having completed the
last duty sooner than he had anticipated, he acted on the impulse. There
was time to escape, so why wait for the morning? And there would be the
glamour of passing through the dark towards clouds and mistland. The
preparations of a man in earnest take no time. He must put a taper in
his pocket, the last relic of the church he was leaving, as the night
would be heavy upon the pathway, and he must walk there and see the
wood-anemones in flower and feel the peace settling upon his eyelids.
There was no time to be lost, for he was old, and still a child, with
everything to learn.
Sibley saw the figure, and screamed, supposing it to be a spirit doing
penance for past sins with the lighted candle; while her husband heaved
and called for drink.
Searell stood upon the path. The wind-flowers were out, but their heads
were hanging in shame; there was no spiritual life in them, they were
already dead like the two black leaves upon the pear tree, and the
destroyed of life was that heap of flesh upon them. He had come away
from the world to forget its violence, and here it was upon his mystic
pathway. He had come to find his God upon the flowers, and had found a
drunken man instead.
He was calm, to Sibley he looked divine, as he placed the candle in the
niche of a gaping boulder, and she wondered at his restraint. He was a
god, for he had made her, had saved her from street life, and might
still save Oliver if he could bear with him. They were not of his
religion, they were only devil-worshippers, and yet he had stooped down
and dragged them almost by violence from the rubbish-pit.
"Forgive 'en this once, master," she cried. "I'll see he don't fall
again. Us didn't look vor ye till the morning, and Oliver went down, and
this be how he comed back."
There was a flat rock above the pixy-water, and here Searell seated
himself, saying, "Do not speak. Your voice is harsh."
For some moments the only sounds were the deep breathing of Vorse and
the tinkling of the stream. The flame of the candle did not flicker, and
Sibley remained as motionless, her hands clasped before her, looking
down. Then Searell spoke:
"I walked along a street, and at a dark end of it a man and woman were
fighting. They were young and fierce. As I came near, the man threw the
woman down and thumped her in the back, I separated them by violence.
They respected my profession, and did not greatly resent my
interference. So there was good in them, but, like young beasts, they
had run wild, and no man had tamed them. You know of whom I am
speaking?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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