The Survivor | Page 5

flush in her cheeks. Her
hair, fair and inclined to curliness, had escaped bounds a little, and she
brushed it impatiently back.
"I must only stay for a moment, Douglas," she said, gravely. "Let us go
down the hill by the Beacon. We shall be on the way home."

They walked side by side in silence. Neither of them were wholly at
their ease. A new element had entered into their intercourse. The
wonderfully free spirit of comradeship which had sprung up between
them since her coming, and which had been so sweet a thing to him,
was for the moment, at least, interrupted.
"I want you to tell me, Douglas," she said at last, "exactly how much of
a surprise to-day has been to you."
"It is easily done," he answered. "Last night I went to your father. I
tried to thank him as well as I was able for all that he has done for me. I
then told him that with every respect for his wishes I did not feel
myself prepared at present to enter the ministry. I showed him my
diplomas and told him of my degrees. I told him what I wished--to
become a schoolmaster, for a year or two, at any rate. Well, he listened
to me in fixed silence. When I had finished he asked, 'Is that all?' I said,
'Yes,' and he turned his back upon me. 'Your future is already provided
for, Douglas,' he said. 'I will speak to you of it to-morrow.' Then he
walked away. That is all the warning I had."
"And what about Joan?"
His face flushed hotly.
"No word from him, nor any hint of such a thing has ever made me
think of Joan in such a connection. I should have been less surprised if
the ceiling had fallen in upon us."
She looked at him and nodded gravely.
"Well," she said, "our oracle has spoken. What are you going to do?"
"I am going to ask for your advice first," he said.
"Then you must tell me just how you feel," she said.
He drew a long breath.
"There are so many things," he said, speaking softly and half to himself.

"Last week, Cicely, I took a compass and a stick and I walked across
the hills to Rydal Mount, where Wordsworth lived. When I came back I
think that I was quite content to spend all my days here. It is such a
beautiful world. Some day when you have lived here longer, you will
know what I mean--the bondage will fall upon you, too. The mountains
with their tops hidden in soft blue mist, the winds blowing across the
waste places, the wild flowers springing up in unexpected corners, the
little streams tearing down the hillside to flow smoothly like a belt of
beautiful ribbon through the pasture land below. The love which comes
for these things, Cicely, is a strange, haunting thing. You cannot escape
from it. It is a sort of bondage. The winds seem to tune themselves to
your thoughts, the sunlight laughs away your depression. Listen! Do
you hear the sheep-bells from behind the hill there? Isn't that music?
Then the twilight and the darkness! If you are on the hilltop they seem
to steal down like a world of soothing shadows. Everything that is
dreary and sad seems to die away; everywhere is a beautiful effortless
peace. Cicely, I came back from that tramp and I felt content with my
lot, content to live amongst these country folk, speak to them simply
once a week of the God of mysteries, and spend my days wandering
about this little corner of the world beautiful."
"Men have lived such lives," she said quietly, "and found happiness."
"Ay, but there is the other side," he continued, quickly. "Sometimes it
seems as though the love for these things is a beautiful delusion, a
maddening, unreal thing. Then I know that my God is not their God,
that my thoughts would be heresy to them. I feel that I want to cast off
the strange passionate love for the place which holds me here, to go out
into the world and hold my place amongst my fellows. Cicely, surely
where men do great works, where men live and die, that is the proper
place for man? I have no right to fritter away a life in the sensuous
delight of moving amongst beautiful places. I want to come into touch
with my kind, to feel the pulse of humanity, to drink the whole cup of
life with its joys and sorrows. Contemplation should be the end of
life--its evening, not its morning."
"Douglas," she cried, "you are right. You know that you have power.

Out into the world and use it! Oh, if I