only twenty-four, Oliver not much older. When life is young the end of it is a myth, and passion is the god.
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?"
"Yes, master, I reckon," she whispered.
"At that time they were living together, although unmarried. I told them I should be requiring a couple to attend to me and my home, and I promised to engage them if they would be legally wedded. But conditions were imposed. One of them has been broken tonight."
"It won't ever happen again, master."
"I have myself to think of. There must be selfishness," said Searell. "There is no escaping from it. If one condition is broken, another may be. You remember the other?"
"Yes, master – no children."
The words sounded harsh, in that fairy place, and they seemed to agree rather with the breathing of the drunken man than with the ringing of the stream.
"Perhaps I am hard, but I have my peace of mind to consider. A child's cry, a child's mischievous ways, would destroy it. There is no room in my house for children, and this is not the place for them. I have a search to make," he murmured. "The scream of infants would lead me far astray. You will remember?"
"Us ha' no other home, master."
"You will remember?"
"Yes, master."
"I will forget what has happened tonight," said Searell, bending from the rock, dipping his hand into the pixy-water. "Let this be a time of regeneration for us all. Do you respect a ceremony?"
"Yes, master, I reckon," she said again, though she could not understand him.
"We will lead a new life," he said, with a smile which was visible in the light of candle and lantern.
Sibley stepped forward as Oliver lifted himself with heavy movements, and muttered a half-conscious "Ask your pardon, master."
Searell brought up a little of the bright water, and sprinkled the woman, then the man, without any other sign, and with the words in his soft mystic voice, "I receive you into the new life."
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