Rest Harrow | Page 8

That she knew, as women do know such things. Romantic,
indeed, trustworthy! Why, a Bayard, a Galahad of a gypsy! After this
adventure, after he had driven her back to her duty, she had owned
allegiance to nobody else in the world. And when her husband died she
had renounced her widow-right, embraced hardship, kept herself by
teaching; and when, finally, he came to her and offered her her choice,
she had chosen Poverty for her lord as single-heartedly as ever did
Francis find his lady in a beggar's garb.
And that being done, it did not "do." That was how she put it now; but
the process had been slow, and never defined. He had carried her off to
Baden for his work of naturalising plants. He had a great name for that,
a European name. In three weeks his work absorbed him; within that
time she knew that she was no mate for him. You can't be picturesque
for ever, she thought. She had never reckoned with his incredible

simplicity, and never for a moment connected his talk with his acts.
Perhaps this Jack was the only really logical man in the world. Now she
found that in talking of Poverty as the only happiness, he literally and
really believed it so. He would own nothing but the barest
necessities--neither pictures, nor furniture, neither clothes nor books.
Pictures, furniture? Why, he had no roof to shelter them! Clothes?
Where was he to carry them, if not on his back? Books? He had
half-dozen, which contained all the wisdom of the world. So he used to
cry. Now, this might be as it was; but when he seemed to expect her to
be of the same mind and behaviour, you will see that he must needs be
mad.
Yet so it was. He had lived in a tent for twenty years, so took his tent to
Germany, and went on living in it. In that, with complete gravity, he
received the Grand Duke of Baden, and several uniformed high
officials, who wore plumed headgear and incredibly high collars, and
glittering boots of patent leather. Folded superbly in cloaks of milky
blue, they looked to Mary like gods; to Senhouse they were amusing
fellow-creatures, interested in his plants and plans. He spread maps on
the ground and followed his racing finger with racing speech. His
German was faulty, but exceedingly graphic. His words shook the tent
curtains. Within half-an-hour, such was the infection of his eloquence,
he had most of his company on their knees beside him, and the Grand
Duke, accommodated with a camp-stool, buried his hand in his beard
and followed every line without a breath. Of all in that tent, she, Mary
Germain, had been the only person to feel the indescribable squalor in
the situation--and she the only one who might have been born to it; for
her upbringing had been humble, and her rise in the world sudden and
short of durance. But she knew now that she had hardly been able to
live it out for very shame.
Directly the visitors had departed there had been a scene--she in tears
of vexation which scalded, and he concerned at her trouble, but unable
for the life of him to see what it was all about. He had been kindness
itself. He always was the kindest and gentlest creature. If she wanted a
house, hotel or what not, she should have it. In fact, he got her one,
installed her, and undertook to keep her there. She bit her lip now to
remember that she had agreed--and the ensuing difficulties. He had no
money, and would have none of his own, and he refused to live under a

roof on any terms whatsoever. Of ten thousand marks a year, which he
was to receive from his Grand Duke, half was to be hers; he would see
her when she would, and she might follow him about as she would--or
not, if she would not. He could not see that there was anything
extraordinary in these propositions. To him it was the simplest thing in
the world that two people should do as they pleased. Society? What in
the name of God had society to do with it? She remembered her tears,
and his blank dismay when he saw them. He thought that she was
unhappy, and so she was; but she was grievously angry also, that she
could not make him see what things would "do" and what things "never
do."
His work had inflamed him; he had marched from place to place,
unencumbered and without a thought or care in the world--inspired
with his scheme, in which plants stood for the words in a poem. He
slept out many nights on the Felsenberg, on the ground, wrapped