Ship me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worstWhere there aren’t no Ten Commandments, an’ a man can raise a thirst;For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be—By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea.
Ship me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worstWhere there aren’t no Ten Commandments, an’ a man can raise a thirst;For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be—By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea.
Ship me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worstWhere there aren’t no Ten Commandments, an’ a man can raise a thirst;For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be—By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea.
Ship me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst
Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments, an’ a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be—
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea.
He did not see Dolly’s frowns, nor the pained expression upon the vicar’s face, nor yet the smirks of the yokels; and when the song was ended he came suddenly back to earth, as it were, and was abashed at the feebleness of the applause.
Later, as he left the hall, he was stopped outside the door by a disreputable, red-haired creature, nicknamed “Smiley-face,” who was often spoken of as the village idiot. He grinned at Jim and touched his forelock.
“Thank ’e, sir,” he said, “for that there song. My, you do sing beautiful, sir!”
“I’m glad you liked it,” Jim answered.
“It was just like dreamin’,” Smiley-face muttered.
Jim looked at him quickly, and felt almost as though he had found a friend. He himself had been dreaming as he sang, and here, at any rate, was one man who had dreamed with him—and they called him the village idiot!
As in the case of so many unions in which mutual attraction of a quite superficial nature has been mistaken for love, the marriage of Jim and Dolly was a complete disaster. Disquietude began to make itself felt within a few weeks, but many months elapsed before Jim faced the situation without any further attempt at self-deception. The revelation that he had nothing to say to his wife, no thought to exchange with her, had come to him early. At first he had tried to believe that it was due to some sort of natural reticence in both their natures; and one day, chancing to open a volume of the poems of Matthew Arnold which Dolly had placed upon an occasional table in the drawing-room (for the look of the thing) he had found some consolation in the following lines:—
Alas, is even Love too weakTo unlock the heart and let it speak?Are even lovers powerless to revealTo one another what indeed they feel?I knew the mass of men conceal’dTheir thoughts....But we, my love—does a like spell benumbOur hearts, our voices? Must we, too, be dumb?
Alas, is even Love too weakTo unlock the heart and let it speak?Are even lovers powerless to revealTo one another what indeed they feel?I knew the mass of men conceal’dTheir thoughts....But we, my love—does a like spell benumbOur hearts, our voices? Must we, too, be dumb?
Alas, is even Love too weakTo unlock the heart and let it speak?Are even lovers powerless to revealTo one another what indeed they feel?I knew the mass of men conceal’dTheir thoughts....But we, my love—does a like spell benumbOur hearts, our voices? Must we, too, be dumb?
Alas, is even Love too weak
To unlock the heart and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal’d
Their thoughts....
But we, my love—does a like spell benumb
Our hearts, our voices? Must we, too, be dumb?
Other lovers, then, had experienced that blank-wall feeling: it was just human nature. But soon he began to realize that in this case the trouble was more serious. He had nothingto say to her. She did not understand him, nor call forth his confidences.
For months he had struggled against the consciousness that he had made a fatal mistake; but at length the horror of his marriage, of his inheritance, and of society in general as he saw it here in England, became altogether too large a presence to hide itself in the dark corners of his mind. It came out of the shadows and confronted him in the daylight of his heart—an ugly, menacing figure, towering above him, threatening him, arguing with him, whithersoever he went. He attributed features to it, and visualized it so that it took definite shape. It had a lewd eye which winked at him; it had a ponderous, fat body, straining at the buttons of the black clothing of respectability; it had heavy, flabby hands which stroked him as though urging him to accept its companionship. It was his gaoler, and it wanted to be friends with him.
At length one autumn day, while he was sitting in the woods among the falling leaves, he turned his inward eyes with ferocious energy upon the monster, and set his mind to a full study of the situation it personified.
In the first place, Dolly held views in regard to the position and status of wife which offended Jim’s every ideal. She was firmly convinced that marriage was, first and foremost, designed by God for the purpose of producing in the male creature a disinclination for romance. It involved a mutual duty, a routine: the wife had functions to perform with condescension, the husband had recurrent requirements to be indulged in order that his life might pursue itsway with the least possible excitement. The whole thing was an ordained and prescriptive business, like a soldier’s drill or a patient’s diet; nor did she seem to realize that there was no room for real love in her conception of their relationship, no sweet enchantment, no exaltation.
Then, again, he was very much disappointed that Dolly had no wish to have a child of her own. She had explained to him early in their married life how her doctor had told her there would be the greatest possible danger for her in motherhood; but it had not taken Jim long to see that a combination of fear, selfishness and vanity were the true causes of her disinclination to maternity. She was always afraid of pain and in dread of death; she always thought first of her own comfort; and she was vain of her youthful figure.
These two facts, that she asserted herself as his wife and that she shunned parenthood, combined to produce a condition of affairs which offended Jim’s every instinct. In these matters men are so often more fastidious than women, though the popular pretence is to the contrary; and in the case of this unfortunate marriage there was an appalling contrast between the crudity of the angel-faced little wife and the delicacy of the hardy husband.
A further trouble was that she regarded marriage as a duality incompatible with solitude or with any but the most temporary separation. One would have thought that she had based her interpretation of the conjugal state upon some memory of the Siamese Twins. When Jim was writing verses in the study—an occupation which, by the way, sheendeavoured to discourage—she would also want to write there; when he was entertaining a male friend she would enter the room, and refuse to budge—not because she liked the visitor, but because she must needs assert her standing as wife and as partner of all her husband’s amusements; when he went into Oxford or up to London she would insist on going too; even when he was talking to the gardener she would come up behind him, slip her arm through his, and immediately enter the conversation.
At first, when he used to tell her that he was going alone into Oxford to have a drink and a chat in the public room at one of the hotels, she would burst into tears, or take offence less liquid but more devastating. Later she accused him of an intrigue with a barmaid, and went into tantrums when in desperation he replied: “No such luck.” For the sake of peace he found it necessary at last to give up all such excursions except when they were unavoidable, and gradually his life had become that of a prisoner.
She carried this assertion of her wifely rights to galling and intolerable lengths. She would look over his shoulder when he was writing letters, and would be offended if he did not let her do so, or if he withheld the letters he received. On two or three occasions she had come to him, smiling innocently, and had handed him some opened envelope, and had said: “I’m so sorry, dear; I opened this by mistake. I thought it was for me.”
He could keep nothing from her prying eyes; and yet, in contrast to this curiosity, she showed no interest whatsoever in his life previous to hismarriage, a fact which indicated clearly enough that her concern was solely in regard toherrelationship with him, and was not prompted by any desire to enter into his personality. At first he had wanted to tell her of his early wanderings; but she had been bored, or even shocked, by his narrations, and had told him that his adventures did not sound very “nice.” Thus, though now she watched his every movement, she had no idea of his early travels, nor knew, except vaguely, what lands he had dwelt in, nor was she aware that in those days he had passed under the name of Easton.
Now Jim enjoyed telling a story: he was, in fact, a very interesting and vivacious raconteur; and he felt, at first, sad disappointment that his roaming life should be regarded as a subject too dull or too unrespectable for narration. “It’s a funny thing,” he once said to himself, “but that girl, Monimé, at Alexandria knows far more about me than my own wife, and I only knew her for a few hours!”
And then her poses and affectations! He discovered early in their married life that her offers to teach the cook her business, or to knit him waistcoats, were entirely fraudulent. She had none of the domestic virtues—a fact which only troubled him because she persisted in seeing herself in the rôle of practical housewife: he had no wish for her to be a cook or a sewing woman. She went through a phase in which she pictured herself as a sun-bonneted poultry-farmer. She bought a number of Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpingtons; she caused elaborate hen-houses to be set up; and she subscribed to various poultry fanciers’ journals. Butit was not many weeks before the pens were derelict and their occupants gone. For some months she played the part of the Lady Bountiful to the village, and might have been seen tripping down the lanes to visit the aged cottagers, a basket on her arm. This occupation, however, soon began to pall, and her apostacy was marked by a gradual abandonment of the job to the servants. Later she had attached herself to the High Church party in Oxford, and had added new horrors to the state of wedlock by regarding it as a mystic sacrament....
The most recent of her phases had followed on from this. She had asked Jim to allow her to bring to the house the orphaned children of a distant relative of her mother’s: two little girls, aged four and five. “It will be so sweet,” she had said, “to hear their merry laughter echoing about this old house. It will be some compensation for my great sorrow in not being allowed to have babies of my own.”
Jim had readily consented, for he was very fond of children; and soon the mites had arrived, very shy and tearful at first, but presently well content with their lot. Dolly declared that no nurse would be necessary, as she would delight in attending to them herself, and for two weeks she had played the little mother with diminishing enthusiasm. But the day speedily came when help was found to be necessary, and now a good-natured nursery-governess was installed at the manor.
Having thus regained her leisure, she bought a notebook, and labelling it “The Tiny Tot’s Treasury,” spent several mornings in dividing the pagesinto sections under elaborate headings written in a large round hand. Jim chanced upon this book one day—it lay open upon a table—and two section-headings caught his eye. They read:—
The book was abandoned within a week or two; but the recollection of its futility, its pose, remained in Jim’s memory for many a day.
The presence of these two little girls, while being a considerable pleasure to Jim in itself, had been the means of irritating him still further in regard to his wife. Sometimes, when she remembered it, she would go up to the nursery to bid them “good-night” and to hear their prayers; and when he accompanied her upon this mission his spontaneous heart was shocked to notice how her attitude towards them was dictated solely by the picture in her own mind which represented herself as the ideal mother. There was a long mirror in the nursery, and, as she caressed the two children, her eyes were fixed upon her own reflection as though the vision pleased her profoundly.
And then, only a few days ago, a significant occurrence had taken place which had led to a painful scene between Dolly and himself. One morning at breakfast the elder of the two little girls had told him that she had had an “awfully awful” dream.
“It was all about babies,” she had said, and then, pausing shyly, she had added: “But I mustn’t tell you about it, because it’s very naughty.”
He was alone in the room with them at the time, and he had questioned the round-eyed little girl, and had eventually extracted from her the startling information that on the previous evening Dolly had been telling them “how babies grew,” but had warned them that it would be naughty to talk about it.
He was furious, and when his wife came downstairs at mid-morning—she always had her breakfast in bed—he had caught hold of her arm and had asked her what on earth she meant by talking in this manner to two infants of four and five years of age.
“It’s not your business,” was the reply. “You must trust a woman’s instinct to know when to reveal things to little girls.”
“Oh, rot” he had answered, angrily; and suddenly he had put into hot and scornful words his interpretation of Dolly’s untimely action. “The fact is, your motive is never disinterested. You are always picturing yourself in one rôle or another. You didn’t even think what sort of impression you were making on the minds of those little girls: you were only play-acting for your own edification.”
“I don’t understand you,” she had stammered, shocked and frightened.
“You pictured yourself,” he went on, with bitter sarcasm, “as the sweet and wise mother revealing to the wide-eyed little girls the great secrets of Nature. I suppose some Oxford ass has been lecturing to a lot of you silly women about the duties of motherhood, and you at once built up your foolish picture, and thought it would make a charming scene—thegentle mother, the two little babies at your knee, their lisping questions and your pure, sweet answer, telling them the wonderful vocation of womanhood. And then you went upstairs and forced it on the poor little souls, just to gratify your vanity; but afterwards you were frightened at what you had done, and told them they mustn’t speak about it, because it was naughty. Naughty!—Good God!—That one word has already sown the seed of corruption in their minds. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
He had not waited for her reply, but had left the room, and had gone with clenched fists into the woods, his usual refuge, sick at heart, and appalled that his life was linked to such a sham thing as his wife had proved herself to be.
He had longed to get away from her, away from Eversfield, back to his beloved high roads once more, out of this evil stagnation; and all the while the ponderous, black-coated creature of his imagination had leered at him and stroked him.
When next he saw his wife he had found her in the rock-garden playing a game with the two children, as though she were determined to make him realize her ability to enter into their mental outlook. “We are playing a game of fairies,” she had told him, evidently not desiring to keep up the quarrel. “All the flowers are enchanted people, and the rockery there is an ogre’s castle. We’re having a lovely time.”
The two little girls actually were standing staring in front of them, utterly bored; for the ability to play with children is a delicate art in which few“grown-ups” are at ease. But Dolly, as she crouched upon the ground, was not concerned with anybody save herself, and the game was designed for the applause of her inward audience and for the eye of her husband, and not at all for the entertainment of her charges.
“Well, when you’ve finished I want you to come and help me tidy my writing-table and tear things up,” he had said to the children; and thereat they had asked Dolly whether they might please go now, and had pranced into the house at his side, leaving her sighing in the rock-garden.
Thoughts and memories such as these paraded before his mind’s eye as he sat upon a fallen tree trunk, deep in the woods. The afternoon was warm and still, and the leaves which fell one by one from the surrounding trees seemed to drop from the branches deliberately, as though each were answering an individual call of the earth. Sometimes his heavy thoughts were interrupted by the shrill note of a bird, and once there was a startled scurry amongst the undergrowth as a rabbit observed him and went bounding away.
The wood was not very extensive, but, with the surrounding fields, it afforded a certain amount of shooting; and one of Jim’s tenants, Pegett by name, who lived in a cottage in a clearing at the far side, acted as a sort of gamekeeper, his house being given to him free of rent in return for his services.
The sun had set, and the haze of a windless twilight had gathered in the distant spaces between the trees when at length Jim rose to return to the manor. His ruminations had led him to no verydefinite conclusion, save only that he had made a horrible mistake, and that he must adjust his life to this glaring fact, even though he offend Dolly’s dignity in the process.
As he stood for a moment in silence, stretching his arms like one awaking from sleep, he was suddenly aware of the sound of cracking twigs and rustling leaves, and, looking in the direction from which it came, he caught sight of the red-faced Pegett, the gamekeeper, emerging, gun in hand, from behind a group of tree-trunks. The man ran forward, and then, recognizing him, paused and touched his cap.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, breathing heavily, “I’m after that there poaching thief, Smiley-face. ’E’s at it again: I seen ’im slip in with ’is tackle. I seen ’im from my window.”
“He’s not been this way,” Jim assured him. “I’ve been sitting here a long time.”
“’E’s a clever ’un!” Pegett muttered, “but I’ll get ’im one ’o these days, sir, I will; and I’ll put a barrel o’ shot into ’is legs.”
“He’s not quite right in his head, is he?” Jim asked.
“Oh, ’e’s wise enough,” the man replied; “wise enough to get ’is dinner off of your rabbits, sir. That’s been ’is game since ’e were no more’n a lad. And never done an honest day’s work in ’is life.”
Smiley-face, as has been said, was generally considered to be half-witted; but on the few occasions on which Jim had spoken to him he had answered intelligently enough, not to say cheekily, though there was something most uncanny about his continuous smile. Nobody seemed to know exactly howhe lived. He slept in a garret in a lonely cottage belonging to an aged and witch-like woman known as old Jenny, and it was to be presumed that he did odd jobs for her in return for his keep; but she herself was a mysterious soul, not inclined to waste words on the passer-by, and her cottage, which stood midway between Eversfield and the neighbouring village of Bedley-Sutton, was superstitiously shunned by the inhabitants of both places.
Pegett was eager to track down the malefactor, and presently he disappeared among the trees, moving like a burlesque of a Red Indian, and actually making sufficient noise to rouse the woods for a hundred yards around. Jim, meanwhile, made his way towards the manor, walking quietly upon the moss-covered path, and pausing every now and then to listen to the distant commotion caused by the gamekeeper’s efforts to break a silent way through the brittle twigs and crisp, dead leaves.
He had just sighted the gate which led from the wood to the lower part of the garden of the manor when his eye was attracted by the swaying of the upper branch of an oak a short distance from the path. He paused, wondering what had caused the movement, which had sent a shower of leaves to the ground, and to his surprise he presently discerned a man’s foot resting upon it, the remainder of his body being hidden behind the broad trunk. He guessed immediately that he had chanced upon, and treed, Smiley-face, and, having a fellow feeling for the poacher, he called out to him, quite good-naturedly, to come down. He received no answer, however; and going therefore to the foot of the oak,he looked up at the man, who was now hardly concealed, and again addressed him.
“It’s no good pretending to be a woodpecker, Smiley-face,” he said. “Come down at once, or I’ll shy a stone at you.”
Smiley-face was a youngish man, with dirty red hair, puckered pink skin, and a smile which extended from ear to ear. His nose was snub, and his eyes were like two sparkling little blue beads, cunning and merry. He now thrust this surprising countenance forward over the top of a branch, and stared down at Jim with an expression of intense relief.
“Lordee!—it’s the Squire,” he muttered. “You did give I a fright, sir: I thought it was Mr. Pegett with ’is gun. Shoot I dead, ’e said he would. ’E said it to my face, up yonder at the Devil’s Crossroads: would you believe it?”
“Yes, he told me he’d let you have an ounce of small shot, but only in the legs of course.”
“Oo!” said Smiley-face. “And me that tender, what with thorn and nettle and the midges.”
“You’d better come down,” Jim advised. “He’s after you now; and you can see I myself haven’t got my gun with me, or I’d pepper you too.”
The man descended the tree, talking incoherently as he swung from branch to branch. Presently he dropped to the ground from one of the lower boughs, and stood grinning before Jim, a dirty, ragged creature without a point to commend him.
“Fairly cotched I am,” he declared. “But I knows a gen’l’man when I sees un. I knows when it’s safe and when it baint. If I was to run now, d’you reckon you could catch I, sir?”
For answer Jim’s lean arm shot out, and hishand gripped hold of the handkerchief knotted around the man’s neck. Smiley-face swung his fist round, but the blow missed; and Jim, who had learnt a trick or two from a little Jap in California, tripped him up with ease, and the next moment was kneeling upon his chest.
“What about that, Smiley-face?” he asked, laughing.
“Wonderful!” replied the poacher. “I should never ha’ thought it.”
Jim rose to his feet. “Get up,” he said, “and let me hear what you’ve got to say for yourself.” Then, as the man did as he was bid, he added: “If Pegett comes along, you can slip through that gate and across my garden. Nobody will see you.”
Smiley-face grinned. “Thank’ee kindly, sir,” he said, touching his forelock. “I knew you was a kind gen’l’man.”
“Oh, cut that out,” Jim replied sharply. “What d’you mean by going after my rabbits?”
“O Lordee! Be they yours?” Smiley-face scratched his red head.
“You know very well they are. I own this place, don’t I?”
“And the rabbits, too?”
“Well, of course!”
“I reckontheydon’t know it, sir,” Smiley-face muttered, still grinning broadly.
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Jim.
The poacher held up his forefinger as though in reproach. “I’m a poor man, me lord,” he murmured.
“You’re a thief.”
“Oh, no,” replied Smiley-face with assurance. “Poachers isn’t thieves, your highness.”
“Well they’remyrabbits.”
“But I’m a poor man,” the other repeated.
“So you said,” Jim answered. “That’s no excuse.”
Smiley-face shook his head. “You wouldn’t be like to understand a poor man—not with a big ’ouse, and ’undreds o’ rabbits, you wouldn’t.”
“Oh, wouldn’t I!” said Jim. “I’ve been poor myself. I’ve known what it is not to have a cent in the world. I’ve slept in hedges; I’ve tramped the roads....”
“You’ave?” The poacher was incredulous, and thrust his head forward, staring at his captor with cunning little eyes.
“Yes, I have,” Jim declared.
“Lordee!” exclaimed Smiley-face. “Then you know....”
“Know what?” asked Jim.
The man made a non-committal gesture. “It’s not for me to say what you know, your worship. But youdoknow.”
Jim made an impatient movement. “Look here now, if I let you go this time will you promise not to do it again?”
Smiley-face shook his head, and again touched his forelock. “Oh, I couldn’t do that, sir. It’s tremenjus sport; and old Jenny she do cook rabbit fine, sir;andeat un, too. Don’t be angry, your highness,” he added quickly, as Jim turned threateningly upon him.
“Don’t keep calling me ‘your highness’ and ‘my lord.’ I’m a plain man, the same as you.”
“So you be, sir,” the other smiled. “You’ve walked the roads; you’ve lain out o’ nights. Youknow. And now you’re a-askin’ o’ I not to poach! Oh, you can’t do that, sir....”
“Well, supposing I give you permission to poach every now and then?” Jim suggested.
“What?—and tell Mr. Pegett not to shoot I dead? Oh, no; there wouldn’t be no sport in that.”
Jim held out his hand. “Look here, Smiley-face,” he said. “You seem to be pulling my leg, but I rather like you. Let’s be friends.”
The man drew back. “Well, I don’t ’xactly ’old with friends, sir. Friends laughs at friends.”
Nevertheless, he grasped the proffered hand.
“Nonsense,” Jim replied. “Friends are people who stand by one another through thick and thin. Friends are people who have something in common which they both defend. You and I have something in common, Smiley-face.”
“And what be that?” the man asked.
“Why,” laughed Jim, “we’re both up against it. We’re both failures in life, tramps by nature. As you say, we bothknow.”
Smiley-face stared at him, not altogether understanding his words.
“You’d better come across the garden with me now,” said Jim.
The poacher shook his head. “No, sir, I reckon I’ll bide ’ere, and go back through the woods.”
“But Pegett’s there with his gun.”
Smiley-face grinned. “’E’ll not get I, never you fear!”
Jim turned and walked towards the gate; and presently his friend the poacher moved stealthily away into the gathering dusk, and soon was lost amongst the trees.
“It must be my laziness,” Jim muttered to himself, as he came meandering down the lane after a long rambling walk around Ot Moor, and through the woods on the far side. It was spring once more, and the third anniversary of his marriage had gone by.
His remark was made in answer to his reiterated question as to why he had not sooner broken away. He heartily disliked any kind of “scene,” and, being a fatalist, he had preferred to “let things rip,” as he termed it, than to make a bid for that freedom which he had so recklessly abandoned. It was true that he had gone up to London more frequently of late; but any longer absences from home had caused such an intolerable display either of temper or of feminine jobbery on Dolly’s part that Jim had found the game hardly worth the candle.
She had no great reason to be jealous of her husband, for he was not a man who gave much thought to women. But she was violently jealous of her position as his wife; and anything which suggested that Jim was not dependent on her for companionship, or had any sort of existence in which she played no part, aroused her pique and led her to assert herself with a horrible sort of assurance. Men and women are capable of many inelegances; but there is nothing within the masculine range so gross as a silly woman’s view of wedlock.
Jim, as he trudged home between the budding hedges of the lane, and heard the call of the spring reverberating through his deadened heart, wished fervently that he had never inherited his uncle’s estate. The afternoon was warm, and the power of the sun, considering the time of the year, was remarkable. It beat into his eyes, and its brilliance seemed to penetrate into his brain, compelling him to rouse himself from his shadowed inaction, and to look about him.
He had been a total failure as a married man, and as a Squire his success had been negligible. His only real friend was Smiley-face, and, though they had little to say to one another, there was always an unspoken understanding between them. Real friendship is occasioned by a mutual sympathy which penetrates through that external skin whereon the artificialities of civilization are stamped, and reaches the heart within, where dwell the reason behind reason, the intelligence beyond intellect, and the clear “Yes” which masters the brain’s insistent “No.” Jim and the poacher understood one another; and on the part of the latter this understanding was supplemented by gratitude, for it chanced that Jim had saved him on one occasion from arrest and imprisonment. The circumstances need not here be related, and indeed they would not be pleasant to recall; for Smiley-face had thieved, and Jim had lied to save him, and the whole affair was highly prejudicial to law and public safety.
Often, when he was bored, he would go down into the woods and utter a low whistle, like the hoot of an owl, which had become his recognized signalfor calling Smiley-face; and together they would prowl about, sometimes even poaching on other property beyond the lane which curved around the manor estate. This whistle had been heard more than once by villagers walking in the lane, and the story had gone about that the place was haunted, a rumour which Jim encouraged, since it deterred the ever-nervous Dolly from following him into its shadowed depths.
Besides this disreputable friendship, there was little comradeship for him in Eversfield. A few of the villagers liked him he believed, especially the children; but the majority of the inhabitants misunderstood him, and there were those who regarded him with marked hostility. The gipsies who camped on Ot Moor, however, found in him a valuable friend; and the tramps and wandering beggars who visited these parts never went empty from his door.
Presently, as he rounded a corner, he encountered one of those who disliked him in the person of Mrs. Spooner, the doctor’s wife, who was riding towards him on her bicycle. Dazzled by the sun in his eyes, he stepped to one side—the wrong side, to give her room, but unfortunately she turned in the same direction and only avoided a collision by applying her brakes with vigour and alighting awkwardly in the rough grass at the roadside.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Jim, raising his hat.
She was a fiery, sandy-haired little woman, who always reminded him of an Irish terrier; and her weather-beaten face was wrinkled with anger as she answered him. “Iwas on my proper side,” she barked; “but I don’t suppose it has ever occurred toyou that there is such a thing as the Rule of the Road.”
Jim was taken aback. “I’m awfully sorry,” he repeated. “I’m afraid I’ve made you angry.”
“Angry!” she snapped. “It’s no good being angry with you; it makes no impression. And, besides, a doctor’s wife has to learn to keep her temper. And then, again, you’re my landlord, and one mustn’t quarrel with one’s landlord.”
“Am I a bad landlord?” he asked.
“Well, you’re not exactly attentive,” she snarled, showing her teeth. “But then you don’t seem to understand English ways. You haven’t much idea of obligation, have you? When those little girls of yours were ill you ignored my husband and sent for an Oxford doctor. That was hardly polite, was it?”
“Oh,that’sthe trouble, is it?” said Jim. “I say, I’m awfully sorry....”
She interrupted him with a gesture. “No, that’s only an example of the sort of thing you do. It’s your behavior in general we all object to. You haven’t got a friend in the place, except the village idiot.”
“You mean Smiley-face?” he queried.
“Yes,” she replied, still allowing her anger to give rein to her tongue. “Smiley-face, the thief and poacher.Heloves you dearly: he nearly knifed Ted Barnes the other day for saying what he thought of you. I congratulate you on your champion!”
“Now, what have I done to Ted Barnes?” Jim asked. Ted was the postman.
“That wretched little Dachs of yours bit him,” she replied, “and you didn’t so much as inquire.”
“It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” said Jim. “And, anyway, it’s my wife’s dog, not mine.”
“Oh, blame it on to your wife,” she sniffed. “It seems to me that the poor dear soul has to take the blame for everything. It’s very unfair on her.”
This was staggering, and Jim stared at her with mingled anger and astonishment in his dark eyes. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, we can all guess what she suffers,” she said. “Only last week she nearly cried in my house.... Oh, you needn’t think she gave away any secrets, the poor little angel. She said herself ‘a wife must make no complaints.’ She’s the soul of loyalty. But we’re not blind, Mr. West.”
Jim scratched his head. “And all this because I nearly collided with your bicycle!” he mused.
Mrs. Spooner pulled herself together. “It’s the last straw that breaks the camel’s back,” she growled. “But I suppose I’m putting my foot into it as usual. I’ll say no more.” And therewith she mounted her bicycle and rode off with her nose in the air. Had she possessed a tail it would have appeared as an excited stump, sticking out from behind the saddle, and vibrating with the thrill of battle.
Jim walked homewards feeling as though he had been bitten in several places. “Whatiswrong with me?” he muttered aloud. He was, of course, aware that he had not been sociable; for the rank and fashion of Eversfield and its neighbourhood combined the dreary conservatism of English country life with the intellectual affectations of Oxford; andOxford, as the Master of Balliol once said, represented “the despotism of the superannuated, tempered by the epigrams of the very young.” But he had always thought that he had something in common with Ted Barnes and his friends; for he had overlooked the fact that village opinion is still dictated in England by the “gentry.”
The realization was presently borne in on him that Dolly, failing to play with any success the part of the indispensable wife and helpmate, had assumed the rôle of martyr, and had confided her fictitious sorrows to her neighbours. It was a bitter thought; and he slashed at the hedges with his stick as it took hold of his mind.
He determined to tax her with this new delinquency at once; but when he reached the manor he found her sitting in the drawing-room with Mr. Merrivall, the tenant of Rose Cottage, who was lying back in an armchair, smoking a fat cigar which Dolly had evidently fetched for him from the cabinet in the study.
George Merrivall was a mysterious bachelor of middle age, whom Jim could not fathom. He had a heavy, grey face; a weak mouth; round, fish-like eyes, which looked anywhere but at the person before him; and thin brown hair, smoothed carefully across a central area of baldness. He had lived at Rose Cottage for the last ten years or more, and was in receipt of a monthly cheque, which might be interpreted as coming from some person or persons who desired his continued rustication.
There was nothing against him, however, save that after the receipt of each of the cheques he wassaid to shut himself up in his cottage for a few days, and the belief was general that at such times he was dead drunk. This, however, might be merely gossip; and his housekeeper, Jane Potts, was a woman of such extremely secretive habits that the truth was not likely to be known. Some people thought that she was, or had been, his mistress; but if this were true this secret, likewise, was well kept. He appeared to be a man of studious habits, a judge of pictures, a collector of rare books, and a regular church-goer.
Dolly had made his acquaintance before she had met Jim, and, since their marriage, he had been one of the few frequent visitors at the manor. Jim, however, did not like him or trust him, thinking him, indeed, somewhat uncanny; and he now greeted him with no enthusiasm.
“Hullo, Squire,” drawled the visitor, without rising from his chair. “Been out tramping as usual? You look as though you’d been sleeping under a hedge!”
“James, dear,” said Dolly, “you really do look very untidy. And you’re all covered over with bits of twigs and things.”
“Yes,” said Jim, wishing to shock. “I’ve been having a roll in the grass.”
Merrivall laughed. “Who with, you young rascal?” he said, pointing at him with the wet, chewed end of his cigar.
Dolly drew in her breath quickly, and stared with round eyes at her friend, and then with a suspicious frown at her husband. “Where have you been?” she asked deliberately.
“Oh, nowhere in particular,” he answered. “Have a drink, Merrivall?”
“Thanks,” the other replied. “Whisky and water for me.”
Jim rang the bell; and presently, excusing himself by saying that he must change his clothes, left the room.
Now, anyone who had seen him, five minutes later, as he walked across the garden, would have thought him entirely mad; for he was carrying his guitar across his shoulder, drum uppermost, and his stealthy step might have suggested that he was about to use it as a weapon with which to bash in the head of some lurking enemy.
Actually, however, he was in the habit of strumming upon this instrument when his nerves were on edge; and, indeed, there was a melancholy charm in his playing, and a still greater in his singing. But to-day his desire thus to relieve his feelings was accompanied by an anxiety not to be overheard by his wife or Merrivall. Moreover, the twilight outside was as warm and mellow as a summer evening, whereas the interior of the manor was grey and dismal. He had therefore indulged an impulse, and was now slinking off, like a sick dog, to his beloved woods to bay to the rising moon.
Passing through the gates at the end of the lower garden, where the hedges of gorse in full flower formed a golden mass, he entered the silent shadow of the trees; and for some distance he pushed forward between the close-growing trunks until he had reached a favourite resort of his, where there was a fallen oak spanning a little stream. Here, througha cleft in the trees, he could see the moon, nearly at its full, rising out of the violet haze of the evening; and as he sat down, with his legs dangling above the murmuring water, he listened in silence to the last notes of a thrush’s nesting-song that presently died away into the hush of contented rest.
Around him the silent oaks were arrayed, their boughs extending outwards and upwards from the gnarled trunks in fantastic shapes, like huge claws and fingers and probosces, feeling for the departed sunlight. Little leaves were just beginning to appear upon the branches, and here and there beneath them, where the ground was free of undergrowth, bluebells and violets appeared amongst the dead bracken and foliage of last year, and the small white wood-anemones like stars were scattered in profusion. The primroses were nearly over, but bracken shoots, curled like young ferns, were pushing up through the brown remnants of a former generation; low-growing creepers and brambles were sprouting into greenness; and the moss and grasses were tender with new life.
Jim’s mood was melancholy, but not sorrowful. It seemed to him that his heart was dead, crushed flat by the flabby hand of that leering figure which personified domestic life, and responded not to the spring. He was so appallingly lonely that if there had been tears within him they now would have overflowed; but there were not. He had no self-pity, no desire to confide his misery to another, no power, it seemed, either to laugh at himself or to weep.
For three long years he had carried his distressabout with him all day long, had gone for lonely walks with it, had sat at home with it, had slept with it, had wakened with it. At first he had obtained relief from within: he had fallen back on his own mind’s great reserves of inward entertainment. But now he was no longer self-sufficient, self-supporting. He was utterly barren: without emotion, without love, without the power to write his beloved verses, without a heart, without even despair. He had always been capable of feeling sorrow for, and sympathy with, the griefs of others: he wished now to God that he could lament over his own; but even lamentation was denied him.
Presently, taking up his guitar, he began to sing the first song that came to his head. It was an old Italian refrain to which he had set his own words; and so softly did the strings vibrate under his practised fingers, so sorrowful was his rich voice, that a listener might have imagined him to be a lovelorn minstrel of Florence in the forests of Fiesole. Yet there was no love in his heart.
He sang next a melancholy negro dirge, and, after a long silence, followed on with his own setting of those lines from Shelley’sOde to the West Wind, which tell of one who, looking down into the blue waters of the bay of Baiæ, saw