XII

Felise was sitting with Martial in the shade of the trees in Robert Godwin’s garden. This was a week after the return of Ruy, whose return had in fact brought it about, though in a manner unknown to either of them. The scanty foliage of the tall poplars and dying sycamores scarce gave them shelter from the slant rays of the evening sun.

In that garden nothing had been planted afresh for generations; the boughs fell away with age, and no new spray grew to fill the interstice, till by degrees there was not much left beyond the trunks, stark and sere-tipped.

The apples had ceased to bear, and the plums, as the felt slips rotted from the nails, drooped forward from the wall, destroying themselves with their own weight.

The caterpillar had worked its fell intent, and the leaves remaining were shrivelled and brown.

Mosses grew along the coping of the wall, and marked with green lines the mortar between the stones.

A ragged hedge had encroached inwards on the grass plot; briars and brambles laid their hands on the turf.

The sward was whitish-green; neglected for twenty years, it had been recently mown, and the stalks of the grasses gave it this colour.

A sense of scantiness⁠—meanness and scantiness⁠—was everywhere about the place. Before them was the end wall of the house; it was narrow and low, and the roof sharp-pitched; the grey-stone slates weighed heavily on it. Some lichen had partly covered the brick against which the red sunset had shone so many years. The one small window at this end overlooking the garden was discoloured, and the panes seemed to have lost their transparency.

Beyond the house the farm-buildings and ricks stood out plainly; no trees intervened to give seclusion to the homestead.

The mean and scanty house, the bare trees, the whitish-green grass plot, the entire absence of flowers, the gravel path unweeded, the neglect and desolation indicated that the owners for generations had found their solace elsewhere than in the culture of home.

The butterflies from the meadows at hand floated over, and left this sullen patch in the midst of the summer cloth of gold far behind them. The swallows did not descend to the eaves, for their nests had been thrust down with poles year after year till their affectionate clinging had at last been repulsed.

All the glory of the summer evening could not light up the meanness of the place.

A great passion renders the eyes of the imaginative as unobservant as those who possess no imagination. Felise did not see the scanty foliage which hardly prevented the sun from burning her cheek, the mean and flowerless garden, or the narrow and discoloured window. Her heart was occupied, and the sterile scene was nothing. Martial was there, and that was enough.

They were talking of things not in the least relevant to their thoughts, as is often the case when the world, if it could see, would smile and say, “They are lovemaking.” Deeds in no degree exhibit the real character, nor do words express the ideas in the inmost mind. Even the deepest lovers whose hearts are as one often talk quite apart from their thoughts. But Martial was not a lover.

“I like to see Shakespeare played,” Martial was saying, “without any scenery or accessories.”

Newspaper topics, the passing book, some allusion to the theatre⁠—these were the subjects they had discussed, as chance acquaintances discuss them. Felise happened to remark that she much wished to see Shakespeare on the stage.

“He is spoiled,” said Martial, “with rich dresses and diamond rings on the actresses’ fingers, with gorgeous scenery, with the very accuracy of the imitation of his era. It is not Shakespeare⁠—it is dress and glitter, and strut and mouthing; and you can never forget the advertisements which tell you you must admire it, it is so real, so lifelike. But that is just what makes it so unreal.”

“Too mechanical,” said Felise.

“Yes, that is it, too much machinery and upholstery⁠—the spirit of the play buried under Turkey-pile carpets, smothered and lost. But if you can only see Shakespeare on bare planks, in a common room⁠—a mere bare platform⁠—and perhaps but badly lighted, and the players in their ordinary dresses, or but just distinguished with a sword, or some emblem, and without any scenery at all, then, indeed, it is most beautiful.”

“He is full of beautiful thoughts,” she said.

“And then those beautiful thoughts come straight to you,” he went on, “and you feel them and think with them. It does not matter in the least if the actors are good or bad, indeed it does not want any acting at all⁠—the words are enough; and as you listen, lo! the bare planks of the platform fade away, and the depth of the green forest comes, and you hear the sound of falling water, and the song of birds, and yonder are deer in the glade. Something goes right to your heart, and it is so real and so true that the tears rise in your eyes⁠—for there is something sad in life always, and there is something sad in the very joyfulness of Shakespeare’s songs. When they sing, ‘For love is crowned with the prime’⁠—you remember ‘Between the acres of the rye’⁠—you can see the green corn and hear the nightingale, who sings while the corn is green. It is so beautiful, and yet it is so sad.”

“I wish I could see it played like that.”

“There are no actors then⁠—Shakespeare plays to you,” said Martial. “He plays himself, and speaks to you. It needs no actors. The best actors are in the way, they interfere; you see them and not Shakespeare. It is very wonderful, I cannot understand it, but there is that in Shakespeare which is not in any other book⁠—something that makes things real, as when Juliet tears down the artificial green leaves and throws them to Romeo; the leaves are as real as real can be.”

“I will try and hear the plays without good actors,” said Felise.

“You can see the stars plainly when Jessica’s lover speaks of them,” went on Martial, excited with a favourite subject and all aglow with his fired imagination; “you can see the heavens inlaid. You have seen the sky, I am sure you have, thickly studded with stars, so close together that the point of a needle would scarcely go between them. Once now and then the sky is like this. When I hear the words spoken on the stage I can shut my eyes and see the sky white with these myriads of stars. Shakespeare was always out-of-doors, in the fields and woods, and on the hills⁠—you may be certain that he was; some of his plays ought to be played in a green meadow. And the poems, they are hawthorn and June roses. But no one seems to care about them now⁠—no one cares for anything outside cities. In the sonnets⁠—” he stopped suddenly, and looked at his watch. “Mr. Godwin is a long time,” in a different and ordinary tone of voice.

Martial had caught himself at his old extravagances, his old romancing, his old ideals coming up again, and beside a woman. This would not do. He would guard himself carefully in future, and talk of anything but the ideal or imaginative.

All that Felise had once found in her solitary communings among the woods and far hills, now came to her in the tones of his voice. Yet she had scarcely heard the words he had uttered, and barely followed their meaning. She was thinking so deeply of the man, she could not think of what he said; she was silent for some time after he ceased.

Presently, remembering he was one of Cornleigh’s largest tenants, she mentioned the case of old Abner, and asked if Martial would use his influence with the Squire.

“I have no influence,” said Martial; “I am very sorry. I can do nothing. Don’t you know that farmers are despised? This Cornleigh Cornleigh was once asked by a tenant to put down a plank-floor in his house, as he suffered from rheumatism, and the stone-floor was cold. The Squire said stone-floors were good enough for farmers.”

“I have heard that Mrs. Cornleigh says it is ridiculous farmers’ daughters should be called ‘Miss.’ ”

“There is not the least chance for your aged cottager,” said Martial. “To the workhouse he must go; it’s good enough for him, you see. It is brutally cruel.”

“Why are people so unfeeling?” said Felise. “I cannot understand why they are so harsh.”

“Perhaps it is a lack of perception,” said Martial. “They do not see the misery they are causing; they cannot put themselves in someone else’s place. Has Mr. Goring been asked to sign the requisition and subscribe to the testimonial?”

“Testimonial?”

“To Edward Cornleigh Cornleigh, Esq., for his long and faithful service in Parliament. There is to be a grand demonstration to induce him to continue our representative. Everybody will go to Maasbury that day.”

“Papa⁠—I mean Mr. Goring⁠—will not subscribe, I am sure.”

Of trifles like these they talked while the sun declined, conversing not of what was in their thoughts, but making up little speeches addressed to the audience, as it were.