第34章

"There are those cottages," he continued, "just before you come to the bridge. They might be repaired and a club house added. The idea is catching on, they tell me. Garden villages, they call them now. It gets the men and women away from the dirty streets; and gives the children a chance."She knew the place. A sad group of dilapidated little houses forming three sides of a paved quadrangle, with a shattered fountain and withered trees in the centre. Ever since she could remember, they had stood there empty, ghostly, with creaking doors and broken windows, their gardens overgrown with weeds.

"Are they yours?" she asked. She had never connected them with the works, some half a mile away. Though had she been curious, she might have learnt that they were known as "Allway's Folly.""Your mother's," he answered. "I built them the year I came back from America and gave them to her. I thought it would interest her. Perhaps it would, if I had left her to her own ways.""Why didn't they want them?" she asked.

"They did, at first," he answered. "The time-servers and the hypocrites among them. I made it a condition that they should be teetotallers, and chapel goers, and everything else that I thought good for them. I thought that I could save their souls by bribing them with cheap rents and share of profits. And then the Union came, and that of course finished it."So he, too, had thought to build Jerusalem.

"Yes," he said. "I'll sound him about giving up his lodgings."Joan lay awake for a long while that night. The moon looked in at the window. It seemed to have got itself entangled in the tops of the tall pines. Would it not be her duty to come back--make her father happy, to say nothing of the other. He was a dear, sweet, lovable lad. Together, they might realize her father's dream:

repair the blunders, plant gardens where the weeds now grew, drive out the old sad ghosts with living voices. It had been a fine thought, a "King's thought." Others had followed, profiting by his mistakes. But might it not be carried further than even they had gone, shaped into some noble venture that should serve the future.

Was not her America here? Why seek it further? What was this unknown Force, that, against all sense and reason, seemed driving her out into the wilderness to preach. Might it not be mere vanity, mere egoism. Almost she had convinced herself.

And then there flashed remembrance of her mother. She, too, had laid aside herself; had thought that love and duty could teach one to be other than one was. The Ego was the all important thing, entrusted to us as the talents of silver to the faithful servant:

to be developed, not for our own purposes, but for the service of the Master.

One did no good by suppressing one's nature. In the end it proved too strong. Marriage with Arthur would be only repeating the mistake. To be worshipped, to be served. It would be very pleasant, when one was in the mood. But it would not satisfy her.

There was something strong and fierce and primitive in her nature--something that had come down to her through the generations from some harness-girded ancestress--something impelling her instinctively to choose the fighter; to share with him the joy of battle, healing his wounds, giving him of her courage, exulting with him in the victory.

The moon had risen clear of the entangling pines. It rode serene and free.

Her father came to the station with her in the morning. The train was not in: and they walked up and down and talked. Suddenly she remembered: it had slipped her mind.

"Could I, as a child, have known an old clergyman?" she asked him.

"At least he wouldn't have been old then. I dropped into Chelsea Church one evening and heard him preach; and on the way home Ipassed him again in the street. It seemed to me that I had seen his face before. But not for many years. I meant to write you about it, but forgot."He had to turn aside for a moment to speak to an acquaintance about business.

"Oh, it's possible," he answered on rejoining her. "What was his name?""I do not know," she answered. "He was not the regular Incumbent.

But it was someone that I seemed to know quite well--that I must have been familiar with.""It may have been," he answered carelessly, "though the gulf was wider then than it is now. I'll try and think. Perhaps it is only your fancy."The train drew in, and he found her a corner seat, and stood talking by the window, about common things.

"What did he preach about?" he asked her unexpectedly.

She was puzzled for the moment. "Oh, the old clergyman," she answered, recollecting. "Oh, Calvary. All roads lead to Calvary, he thought. It was rather interesting."She looked back at the end of the platform. He had not moved.