... Old palaces and towersQuivering within the wave’s intenser day,All overgrown with azure moss, and flowersSo sweet, the sense faints picturing them.
... Old palaces and towersQuivering within the wave’s intenser day,All overgrown with azure moss, and flowersSo sweet, the sense faints picturing them.
... Old palaces and towersQuivering within the wave’s intenser day,All overgrown with azure moss, and flowersSo sweet, the sense faints picturing them.
... Old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.
As he sang there rose before his inward eye a vision of the sun-bathed lands through which he had wandered so happily in the past. He saw againthe white houses reflected in the still waters of Mediterranean, the olive-groves passing up the hillsides, the hot roads leading through the red-roofed villages, and the dark-skinned peasants driving their goats along the mountain tracks. He saw the lights of the city of Alexandria twinkling across the bay, and heard the surge of the breakers beating on the rocks. And then, quietly and vaguely, out of the picture there came the serene, mysterious face of a woman, a face he had thought forgotten. Her black hair drifted back into his recollection, her grey eyes seemed to gaze into his, and in his inward ear the one word “Monimé” reverberated like an echo of a dream. And suddenly a door seemed to open within him, and with an overwhelming onset, his captive emotions, his feelings, his long-forgotten joys and sorrows, broke out from their prison and surged through him.
He laid his guitar aside, and for a while sat wrapt in a kind of ecstasy. It was as though he had risen from the grave: it was as though his heart had come back to life within him.
He scrambled to his feet and stood for a moment, staring up at the moon, his fists clenched and drumming upon his breast. Then, to his amazement, he felt his eyes filled with tears—tears which he had not shed since he was a small boy. He uttered a laugh of embarrassment, but it broke in his throat, and all the cynic in him collapsed.
Throwing himself upon the ground, he spread his arms out before him and buried his face in the young violets. He did not care now how foolish nor how unmanly his emotion might seem to be.Here, in the woods, he was alone, and only the understanding earth should receive his tears.
For some time he lay thus upon his face; but at length the paroxysms passed. He raised his head, and as he did so he became aware, intuitively, that he was being watched.
“Who’s there?” he exclaimed, staring into the surrounding undergrowth.
There was a crackling of twigs, and a moment later Smiley-face emerged into the moonlight, and stood before him, touching his forelock.
Jim clambered to his feet. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, angrily. He was ashamed that he had been observed, and the colour mounted threateningly into his face.
The poacher grinned. “Beg pardon, sir,” he said. “I heerd you singin’, and I came to listen. And then I saw you was in trouble, and....” He took a crouched step forward, his face puckered up, and his hands twitching. “Oh, sir, my dear, what be the matter? Tell I, sir, tell I!” His voice was passionately insistent. “Tell I! Don’t keep it from your friend. Friends stick to one another through thick and thin—you said it yourself, sir: them’s your werry words, what you said when we shook ’ands. I’d do anything in the world for you, sir, I would, so ’elp me God! I’m a poacher, and maybe I’m a thief, too, like you said; but s’elp me, I can’t see you a’weeping there with your face in the ground—I can’t see that, and not say nothin’. Tell I, my dear!-tell your friend. If it’s that you’ve lost all your money, I’ll work for you, sir. I don’t want no wages. If it’s your enemies, say the word and I’llkill ’em, I will. I’d swing for you, and gladly, too.”
Jim stared at him in amazement. The words poured from the man’s lips in such a torrent that there could be no question of their boiling sincerity. “Why, Smiley-face,” he said at length, “what makes you feel like that about me? I don’t deserve it.”
Smiley-face laughed aloud. “When I makes a friend,” he replied, “I makes a friend. You done things for I what I can’t tell you of. You’re the first man as ever treated I fair; and now you’re breaking your ’eart, and you’re letting it break and not tellin’ nobody. Tell I, sir, tell I, my dear, I’m askin’ you, please.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” smiled Jim, putting his hand on his friend’s tattered shoulder. “It’s only that people like you and me are failures in life. We don’t seem to fit in with English ways. I suppose I got thinking too much about other lands, about the old roads, and the sea, and the desert, and all that sort of thing. But you wouldn’t understand: you’ve never been far away from Eversfield, have you?”
He sat down and motioned Smiley-face to do likewise.
“Tell I about them places, sir,” said the poacher, “like what you sings about.” Instinctively, and without reasoning, he knew that a long talk was the best remedy for his friend; and gradually, by careful questioning, he launched him forth upon distant seas, and led him to speak of countries far away from the catalepsy of his present existence.
Jim spoke of the winding roads which lead up to the hills of Ceylon, where the ground is covered withlittle crimson blossoms of the Laritana, and where the peacocks, sitting in rows by the wayside, utter their wild cries as the bullock-bandies go lurching by, and the monkeys swing from tree to tree, chattering at the travellers. He spoke of the Aroe Islands, where, once a year, the pearl merchants are gathered; and he pictured in words the scene at night on the still waters when every kind of craft is afloat, and every kind of lantern sways under the stars in the warm breath of the wind.
Thence his memory leapt over the seas to the southern coasts of Italy, where, upon a hot summer’s night, the little harbour of Brindisi was gay with lanterns in like manner, and the sound of mandolins floated across the water; while the narrow streets were thronged with townspeople taking the air after the heat of the day. Later, he wandered to the slopes of Lebanon, where clear rivulets rush down from the hills, through thickets of oleander, and tumble at last into the blue Mediterranean. He spoke of mulberry orchards, and open tracts covered with a bewildering maze of flowers and flowering bushes: poppies, broom, speedwell, lupin, and many another, so that the hillsides, overhanging the sea, are dazzling to the eyes.
And so he came to Egypt and the desert, and told of the jackal-tracks which lead back from the Nile into the barren, mysterious hills, where a man may lose himself and die of thirst within a mile or two of hidden wells; where the mirage rises like a lake from the parched sand, and lures the thirsty traveller to his doom; and where the vultures circlein the blue heavens, waiting for the men and the camels who fall and lie still.
For a long time he sat talking thus, while the moon rose above the trees; but at length the chill of the air reminded him that he ought to be returning to the manor, and, picking up his guitar, he rose to his feet. Smiley-face, however, did not move. He was staring in front of him, his two hands thrust into the grass.
“Come along,” said Jim. “I must go back to the house now.”
The poacher looked up at him with a curious expression upon his face. “Reckon you baint agoin’ to tell I what your trouble is, sir,” he smiled.
Jim shook his head. “No,” he answered. “I can’t talk about it, somehow. But I’ll tell you this, Smiley-face: if I ever do talk to anybody about it all it’ll be to you.”
When he reached the manor, Jim found that he was late for dinner; and at the foot of the stairs he was confronted by Dolly, who was much annoyed at seeing him still in his day clothes.
“Oh, James!” she exclaimed, angrily. “Wherehaveyou been? Dinner has already been kept back a quarter of an hour for you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m quite impossible. Don’t wait for me: I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“Don’t hurry,” she replied, icily. “Mr. Merrivall is going to dine with us. I shan’t be lonely.”
For three years, for three interminable years, Jim had borne the stagnation of his married life at Eversfield, the door of his heart shut against the whispering voices which bade him turn his back on his heritage and come out into the free world once more. But now matters had reached a psychological crisis. Something had happened to him; something had opened the door again. And as he sat in his room that night these voices seemed to assail him from all sides, enticing him to leave England, coaxing him, wheedling him, jeering at him for his lack of enterprise, and persuading him with the pictured delights of other lands.
“Give it up!” they murmured. “You were never meant for this sort of thing: you can never find happiness here. Think of the sound of the sea as it slaps the bow of the outbound liner; think of the throb of the screw; think of the noisy boatloads surrounding the ship when the anchor has rattled into the transparent water of a southern harbour; the familiar sound and smells of hot little towns, sheltering under the palms; the soft crunch of camels’ pads upon the desert sands; the far-off cry of the jackals. Think of the unshackled life of the happy wanderer; the freedom from the restraint of the Great Sham; the absence of these posings and pretences of so-called respectability. Give it up, you fool; and takeyour lazy body over the hills and far away: for your lost content awaits you beyond the horizon, and it will never come back to you in this stagnant valley.”
Until late in the night he allowed his thoughts to wander in forbidden places, and when at last he sought comfort in sleep, his dreams were full of far-away things and alluring scenes. In the early morning he lay awake for an hour before it was time to take his bath; and through the open window the sound of the chimes from the distant spires of Oxford floated into the room.
“Confound those blasted bells!” he cried, suddenly springing from his bed. “They have drugged me long enough. To-day I am awake: I shall sleep no more!”
Of a sudden he formed a resolution. He would go away alone for two or three months, in spite of any protest which his wife might make. And not only would he take this single holiday: he would lay his plans so that there should be another scheme of existence to which, in the future, he could retire whenever his home became unbearable. His uncle had led a double life: he, too, would do so; not, however, in the company of any Emily, but in the far more alluring society of that Lady called Liberty. James Tundering-West, Squire of Eversfield, from henceforth should be subject to perennial eclipses, and at such times Jim Easton, vagrant, should be resuscitated.
He would sell out a couple of thousand pounds’ worth of stock, and generously place it as a first instalment to the credit of Jim Easton in anotherpart of the world; and nobody but himself should know about it. For the last three years he had lived mainly on his rent-roll, and this should remain the means of subsistence of his wife, and of himself so long as he was in England. But the bulk of the remainder of his fortune left of late almost untouched, should gradually be transferred, little by little, to the credit of the wanderer.
At breakfast he was so enthralled with his scheme that he paid no attention whatsoever to Dolly’s offended silence. He told her that he was going to London for a few days, and that very possibly he would there make arrangements to go abroad for a holiday.
“As you please,” she replied, coldly. “I, too, need a change; but I can’t play the deserter. I must stay here, and try to do my duty.”
Driving into Oxford he turned the matter over in his mind unceasingly, and in the train he thought of little else, nor so much as glanced at the newspapers he had brought. The difficulty was to think out a means whereby he could now place this capital sum to the account of Jim Easton, and later add to it, without using his cheque book or any bank notes which could be traced; for all the salt would be gone out of the proposed enterprise if his recurrent change of personality were open to detection. He wanted to be able to say to Dolly each year: “I am going away, and I shall be back about such-and-such a date, until then I shall not be able to be found, nor troubled in any way by the exigencies of domestic life.”
At length, as he reached the hotel where he wasgoing to stay, the simple solution came to him; and so eager was he to put the plan into execution that he was off upon the business so soon as he had deposited his dressing-case in the bedroom. In South Africa he had become an expert in the valuation of diamonds, and now he proposed to put this knowledge to use. He knew the addresses of two or three dealers who supplied the trade with unset stones; and to these he made his way, with the result that during the afternoon he had selected some twenty small diamonds which were to be held for him until his cheques should be forthcoming.
The business was resumed next day; and by the following evening he had depleted his capital by two thousand pounds, and in its place he held a little boxful of diamonds which, so far as he could tell, were worth considerably more than he had paid for them. These stones he proposed to sell again, practically one by one, in various foreign cities, depositing the proceeds in the name of Jim Easton at some bank, say in Rome; and, as all the jewels were of inconspicuous size and small value, his dealings would not be able to be traced beyond the original purchases in London, even if so far as that.
Before returning to Oxford he decided to pay a call on Mrs. Darling to invite her to go down to stay at Eversfield during his absence. He regarded her as a capable, good-natured, and entirely unprincipled woman; and she had invariably shown him that at any rate she liked him, if she were not always proud of him. As a mother-in-law she had been extraordinarily circumspect, and, in fact, she had effaced herself to a quite unnecessary extent, seldomcoming to stay at the manor, but preferring to pass most of her time at her little flat in London.
She was at home when he called, and greeted him with affection, good-temperedly scolding him for not writing to her more often.
“You might have peaceably passed away, for all I knew,” she said.
Jim smiled. “Oh, I think Dolly would have mentioned it, if I had,” he replied. He gazed around the room: it was always a source of profound astonishment to him. The walls were silver-papered, the woodwork was scarlet, the furniture was of red lacquer, the carpet was grey, and the chairs and sofa were upholstered in grey silk, ornamented with much silver fringe and many tassels of silver and scarlet. Upon the walls were a dozen Bakst-like paintings of women displaying bits of their remarkable anatomy through unnecessary apertures in their tawdry garments; and as Jim stared at them he was devoutly thankful that Mrs. Darling had not robed herself in like manner.
She followed the direction of his gaze. “Hideous, aren’t they?” she said.
“They are, rather,” he replied. “Why do you have them?”
“Well, you see,” she answered, “so many milliners and dressmakers come to see me in connection with my monthly fashion articles; and they would of course think nothing of my taste if I had any really nice pictures on my walls.”
She dived behind the sofa and rose again with her hands full of a medley of startling nightgowns.
“Look at these!” she laughed. “They were lefthere for me to criticise by a shop which calls itself ‘Frocks, Follies, and Fragrance.’ Horrible, aren’t they? The only nice thing about them is their exquisite material. I always say to all young married women: ‘Flannel nightgowns may keepyouwarm, butcrêpe-de-Chinewill keep your husband.”
Jim stared at the wildly coloured garments long and thoughtfully. “I sometimes think,” he said at length, “that women have no sense of humour.”
“No more has Nature,” she replied. “Look at the camel.” She changed the conversation. “Tell me,” she said, “how is Dolly?”
“Top hole, thanks,” he replied.
“I notice,” Mrs. Darling remarked, as they sat down together on the big sofa, “that you don’t bring her to Town with you nowadays. I hope you’re not leading a double life?”
“No,” he answered.
“That’s right,” she said. “That’s a good boy! Have you taken to drink yet?”
Jim laughed. “No, why should I?”
“Most married men do,” she told him. “My own husband did. He never really showed it; but I’ve seen him get up the morning after, turn on a cold bath, drink it, and go to bed again.”
“Well, as a matter of fact,” said Jim, “Iamthinking of breaking loose for a bit. That’s really what I’ve come to see you about. I want your advice.”
“Advice! Advice fromme?” she exclaimed. “Why, my dear boy, my advice on domestic affairs would be worth about as much as the figure 0 without its circumference-line.”
“Well, not your advice exactly, but your help. The fact is, I want to get away. I’ve grown flat and stale down at Eversfield, and I think Dolly finds me rather a bore sometimes. I have an idea that it would do us both a lot of good if I were to go off for a bit by myself.”
Mrs. Darling looked anxiously at him, and her jesting manner left her for a moment. “I hope nothing has gone wrong between you?” she said earnestly.
Jim hastened to assure her. “Oh, no, everything is quite all right.”
“I’m sure I hope so,” she replied. “But I know Dolly is rather exacting.”
“It’s my own fault,” he remarked, quickly. “I must be quite impossible as a husband.”
Mrs. Darling uttered an exclamation of distress. “Oh, then thereissomething wrong?” she said. “I thought so, from the tone of her letters.”
Jim was embarrassed. “No, I only want to get away because I’m not very well, and also because I want to polish up some old verses of mine.”
She looked at him earnestly. “My dear boy,” she said, “if you’ve lost your trousers, it’s no good putting on two coats. If you’re unhappy at home, it’s no good kidding yourself with other reasons for getting away.”
“I assure you ...” Jim began.
She interrupted him. “Come on, now—what d’you want me to do? D’you want me to persuade Dolly to let you go?”
He shook his head. “No,” he answered. “I am going anyhow. What I want you to do is to keepan eye on her while I’m gone. Take her away for a holiday, if you like: I’ll gladly pay all expenses. Keep her amused.”
“How long to you intend to be away?” she asked.
“Oh, a couple of months or so,” he replied. “I don’t exactly know....”
She turned to him, searchingly. “Is it another woman?”
“No, no,” he laughed. “I dislike women intensely.”
“Thank you!” she smiled. “On behalf of my daughter and myself, thank you!” She was silent for a while. “I wonder why you ever married?” she said, at length.
“We all have our romances,” he answered.
“Romances!” She uttered the word with bitterness. “What is romance? Just Nature’s fig-leaf. It is something that Youth employs to disguise something else. Youth is a calamity. I really sometimes thank Heaven for middle age and old age: they bring one at any rate the blessing of indifference. I’m thankful that I’m an old woman.”
“You’re not old,” Jim replied. “You don’t look forty. And you’re in the pink of health.”
“Yes, my dear,” she said. “I’ve nothing much to complain of in that respect. All I want is a new pair of legs and a clean heart....”
“Oh, your heart’s all right,” he told her, putting his hand on hers.
“No,” she answered. “I’m a bad old woman. I earn a living by writing indecently about women’s clothes, and how to wear them so as to destroy men’svirtue. I sit about in night-clubs; I play cards on Sundays; I’ll dine with anybody on earth who’ll give me a good dinner and a bottle of wine; and I never go to church. What d’you think Eversfield would say to that?”
“Oh, Eversfield be hanged,” he replied, with feeling. “You’re a good sort, and you’re kind. That’s better than all the rotten respectability of Eversfield.”
“I’m not so sure,” she said. “Respectability has its merits. You go and spend a few weeks with the sort of people I mix with, and you’ll find Miss Proudfoote of the Grange like a breath of fresh air.”
“I’m sure I shouldn’t,” Jim answered with conviction.
She shrugged her shoulders, and presently their conversation turned in other directions.
When at length he rose to go, he startled her by remarking that he would not see her again until his return from his travels; and to her surprised question he replied that he was going down to Oxford next morning, and that on the following day he would set out on his wanderings.
She looked anxiously at him once more. “There isn’t any real quarrel between you and Dolly, is there?” she asked again.
He reassured her. “No, none at all. It’s only that I have a craving for Italy....”
“Well,” she said, “if you live in a thatched house, don’t start letting off Roman candles.”
“What d’you mean?” he laughed.
“I mean,” she replied. “ ... Oh, never mindwhat I mean. Don’t go the pace, and don’t stay away too long; or there’ll be trouble. Don’t forget that you’ve got a tradition to keep going. Don’t forget your uncle’s tombstone. What does it say?—‘A man who nobly upheld the traditions of his race....’”
“Yes, isn’t it rot?” he answered. “Do you know I came across some of his letters, and I can tell you his respectability was only skin-deep. All his life he lived a lie, and now he lies in his grave, and his epitaph lies above him.”
She took his proffered hand in hers and held it for a moment. “Jim, my boy,” she said, “I’m only a wicked old woman; but I’ve got a great respect for virtue, even when it’s only skin-deep. It’s the people who don’t care what their neighbours say who come to grief.”
When Jim returned to Oxford and broke the news of his immediate departure to Dolly, she received it with a calmness which he had not expected. He had anticipated a painful scene, and he was even a little disappointed that she fell in so readily with his plans.
“Yes,” she said. “If you’ve made up your mind to go, it’s no good hanging about here. You’ve been finding rather a lot of fault with me lately. Perhaps when you are alone you will appreciate all I’ve done for you.”
“Of course I shall, dear,” he replied.
Quietly, and in a very business-like manner, she asked him what arrangements he had made about the money she was to draw; and this being settledto her satisfaction she approached, with apparent diffidence, a more important subject.
“I do hope you aren’t going to any dangerous places,” she said. “You mustn’t take any risks.”
He assured her that he had no intention of doing so.
“But supposing anything happened to you,” she went on, “what would become of me?”
“I’ll make my will, if you like,” he laughed.
She uttered a gasp of horror. “What a dreadful thought!” she murmured. She was silent for a few moments, her eyes gazing out of the window, her mouth a little open. Then, without looking at him, she said: “I suppose just a line on a sheet of paper will do? You only have to say that you leave everything to me ... at least I take it that there’s nobody else to leave it to?” She turned to him with an innocent smile.
“Oh, no, it’s all yours if I die,” he replied.
“Well, you’d better do it now before you forget,” she said, smiling at him and patting his hand. She pointed to the writing-bureau in the corner of the room. “You just scribble it on a half-sheet, and seal it up, and write on the envelope ‘to be opened in the event of my death,’ and post it to your solicitors. That’s all.”
“You seem to have thought it all out,” he laughed, going to the bureau.
“Oh, James!” she exclaimed, reproachfully. “What dreadful things you do say!”
His departure on the following morning was unceremonious. In spite of Dolly’s anxieties in regard to his safety, the fact remained that he was onlygoing away for a couple of months or thereabouts. He was to take but a single portmanteau with him; his precious diamonds were to be carried in a knotted handkerchief in his pocket; and in his hand he would hold only a stout walking-stick. The only persons who appeared to be concerned at his going were the two little girls; and even they—as is the habit of children—returned to their play before the carriage had left the door.
Dolly had said she would drive with him into Oxford to see him off in the train; but, as he was to depart at an early hour, she was not dressed in time, and was therefore obliged to bid him “good-bye” at the foot of the stairs. She looked a pretty little creature, standing there in a pink dressing-gown, with the morning sunlight striking upon her fair hair, which fell around her shoulders, as though she had been disturbed in the act of combing it, and with a background of the dark portraits of previous owners of the manor. In her hand she was carrying a large bunch of apple-blossom, which she accounted for by saying that she had just been picking it from outside her bedroom window at the moment when he called out to her. Knowing her habit of studying effects, Jim felt sure that she had thought out this charming picture, and had never had any intention of accompanying him to the station; nor had he the heart to ask her why, if she had but now plucked the blossom from the tree, the stems should be dripping with water as though just lifted from a vase.
“Every picture tells a story,” he muttered to himself as he drove away, “and some tell downright lies.”
On his arrival in Paris, his sensations were not far removed from bliss; but soon he was obliged to set about the tedious business of selling his diamonds, one by one, in a manner so unobtrusive and anonymous that no particular notice should be paid to the deals. He was somewhat disappointed to find that, in spite of his expert knowledge both of the stones and of the channels for their disposal, he failed to avoid a slight loss on the various transactions; but he was in no mood to bargain, and he was well content, at the end of the second day, to be rid of a quarter of his collection, and to feel the notes, which were to be the support of his future wanderings, pleasantly bulging out of his pocket-book.
From Paris he proceeded to Lyons, Marseilles, and Monte Carlo, in which places he disposed of the remainder of his collection, this time at a small profit. During these business transactions he felt that he was generally regarded as a thief, and more than once his experiences were unpleasant; but he was so full of the idea of hiding his tracks, and of building up once more the old life of freedom beyond the range of Dolly’s prying eyes, that he adopted, without any regard to his natural sensitiveness, all manner of subterfuges and variations of name.
At length, with quite an unwieldy packet of smallnotes, he made his way along the coast, crossed the frontier, being still under his real name, and stopped at Savona, Genoa, and Spezia, where he laboriously changed the money, little by little, into Italian currency. He then proceeded by way of Pisa to Rome, where, with a sense of almost schoolboyish exultation, he deposited his vagrant’s fortune at a well-known bank, and opened an account in the name of “James Easton.” This accomplished, he felt that he had taken the first firm step in his emancipation; for in future, whenever Eversfield became unbearable, he could speed over to Rome, even for but a month at a time, and, moving eastwards or southwards from this base, under the name by which he had formerly been known, he would always find money at his disposal, and complete freedom from domestic obligations.
He had now been gone from England some fourteen days, but Rome was the first place at which he had assumed this other name, for he intended Italy to be the western frontier of the vagrant’s life. The change of name meant far more to him than can easily be realized: it had a psychological effect upon his mind, such as, in a lesser degree, can sometimes be produced by a complete change of clothes. He almost hoped that he would be recognized and hailed by some acquaintance from England in order that he might look him deliberately in the face and say: “I am afraid you have made a mistake.Myname is Easton: I come from Egypt.”
Having assumed this alias his first object was to recapture the old beloved sense of liberty by resuming his wandering existence, and by turning hisback upon the elegances of life. Under the name of Easton, therefore, he at once selected a small inn in the democratic Trastevere quarter, near the Ponte Sisto, which had been recommended to him as the resort of commercial travellers and the like who desired a little cleanliness in conjunction with moderate honesty and extreme low prices; and having here deposited his portmanteau and engaged a room for a fortnight hence, he went at once to the railway station with nothing but a knapsack and a walking-stick in his hand and took the long journey back to Pisa, his intention being to wander southwards from that point along the beautiful coast, where the pine-woods came down to the seashore.
During the years at Eversfield his emotions had dried up, and he had become barren of all exalted thoughts. He was, as he expressed it to himself, continuously “off the boil.” But now once more his brain was galvanized, and all his actions were intensified, speeded up, and ebullient. His power of enjoyment, lost so long, had come back to him, and now not infrequently he was blessed with that fine frenzy which had left his mind unvisited these many weary months. He was a different man to-day: again hot-blooded, again eager to listen to the lure of the unattained, again capable of soaring, as it were, to the sun and the stars.
Two days later there befell him an adventure which changed the whole course of his life.
He had been walking all day through the pines and along the beach, and in the late afternoon he inquired of a passer-by whether there were any village in the neighbourhood where he might spend thenight. The man replied that the path by which Jim was going led to a small fishermen’s inn, where a room and a meal were generally to be obtained, but that if he desired to reach the next little town he would have to retrace his steps and make a considerable detour, for, although it stood upon the seashore only three kilometres further along, it could not be approached by the beach, owing to the presence of a wide estuary. The day having been extremely hot, Jim was tired, and he therefore decided to try his luck at this house, which, the man said, was distant but ten minutes’ walk.
He found it to be a high, square, drab-washed building, which like so many poorer houses in Italy, gave the melancholy suggestion that it had seen better days. The red-tiled roof was in need of repair, the green shutters were falling to pieces, and there were innumerable cracks and small dilapidations upon its extensive areas of blank wall. The only indications that it was an inn were a long table and a bench upon one side of the narrow doorway, and a number of crude drawings in charcoal upon the lower part of the front wall.
The house stood upon a mound facing the beach, and backed by the dark pines; and at one side there was a patch of cultivated ground in which a few vegetables were growing. A small rowing-boat, moored by a rope, floated upon the smooth surface of the sea, and upon a group of rocks near by two dark-skinned fishermen sat smoking cigarettes. One of these, upon seeing Jim, put his hand to his mouth and called out to the innkeeper, who replied from some empty-sounding part of the ground-floor, andpresently came with clamorous footsteps along the stone-flagged passage to the door.
He was a tall, stout man, with a two-days’ growth of grey stubble covering the lower part of his tanned face, and an untidy mat of white hair upon his head. His forehead was deeply wrinkled, and his eyes were screwed up as though the light hurt him. Had he changed his loose corduroy trousers and his collarless striped shirt for the garb of his ancestors, one would have said that the marble Sulla of the Vatican Museum had come to life.
Jim was in two minds as to whether to spend the night in this somewhat forbidding house, or to proceed upon his way; and he therefore asked only for a bottle of wine, at the same time inviting his host to drink a glass with him. The man accepted the invitation with alacrity, and, disappearing into the echoing house, soon returned with the bottle. He hesitated, however, before drawing the cork, and diffidently mentioned the price, whereupon Jim put his hand in his pocket and drew forth his loose change. The wrinkles deepened on the man’s forehead as he gazed at the money, and an expression of disappointment passed over his face; for the coins did not amount to the sum named. Jim, however, smilingly reassured him, and produced his roll of notes, from which he selected one, asking whether his host could change it. At this the man’s face showed his satisfaction, and he hastened to uncork the bottle, thereafter fetching the change and sitting down to enjoy the wine with every token of brotherly love.
For some time they talked, and it was very soonapparent that the innkeeper was of the braggart type. He had once been in the army, and he described with great gusto his gallant exploits and feats of arms, relating also his affairs of the heart, and telling how once he fought a duel and killed his man for the sake of a girl who was in no wise worthy of him. Jim listened with amusement, and presently, in answer to his host’s questions, he explained that he himself was merely a mild Englishman, and that he was walking from village to village along the coast by way of a holiday. This statement was received with frank astonishment, and led to a further series of inquiries, to which Jim replied with amused volubility, pointing out the delights of a wandering life, and speaking of the pleasures of a state of incognito, when hearth and home are temporarily abandoned, and nobody knows whither one has disappeared. The innkeeper listened with evident interest, looking at him searchingly from time to time as he talked, and forgetting to boast or even drink his wine, as he sat with folded arms and wrinkled brow, staring out to sea.
The sun was setting when at length Jim rose to his feet to consider whether he should proceed or should stay the night where he was. His legs felt weary, however; and when his host presently made the suggestion that he should inspect the guest-chamber upstairs, Jim was quickly persuaded to do so, and, finding it quite habitable, at once decided to remain until morning.
The innkeeper thereupon retired into the back premises to prepare a meal, and Jim sauntered down to the beach to enjoy the cool of the dusk. Climbingover the promontory of smooth, rounded rocks, to one of which the rowing-boat was moored, he pulled the little craft towards him by its rope, and, scrambling into it, sat for some time handling the oars and gazing down into the water. It was very pleasant to ride here upon the gently moving swell, listening to the quiet surge of the waves upon the shore, and watching the fading colours of the sky; and when, in the dim light, he saw his host appear at the doorway of the house, looking about him for his guest, he stepped back on to the rocks with lazy reluctance.
The fare presently provided in the front room was rough but appetizing, and when the meal was finished he returned once more to the table outside, where he found his host seated with three other men, for whom, after a ceremonious introduction, Jim called for another bottle of wine. The appearance of these other guests, however, was not pleasant: they looked, in fact, as disreputable a gang of cut-throats as ever sat round a guttering candle; and once or twice he thought he observed upon the innkeeper’s face an expression something like that of apology.
Nevertheless, the party remained talking, and their host continued his bragging, far into the night, for it seemed that all of them were to sleep at the inn; and it was midnight before Jim made his salutations and was lighted up to his room by the owner of the house.
As soon as he was alone he went to the open window, and stared out into the darkness. The sky was brilliant with stars which were reflected in thesea, whose rhythmic sobbing came to his ears; but he could only dimly discern the rocks and the little rowing-boat, and the line of the beach was lost in the indigo of the night. For some time he stood deep in thought; but at length, of a sudden, a feeling of apprehension entered his mind, and, returning into the candlelight, he remained for a while irresolute in the middle of the room.
The sensation, however, presently passed; but in order to occupy his thoughts he drew from his pocket an unused picture-postcard, which he had purchased on the previous day, and performed the much postponed duty of writing a line to his wife, telling her shortly that he was well. He addressed the card to her and laid it aside, with the intention of posting it at some obscure village whose name upon the postmark would convey nothing to Dolly. Then, seating himself upon the side of the bed, he prepared to undress.
As he stooped to unlace his boots the tremor of apprehension returned to him, and for some moments he sat perfectly still, looking at the candle, and wondering at his unfamiliar nervousness. “I suppose,” he thought to himself, “I have been too long in the shelter of Eversfield, and have grown unaccustomed to the ordinary circumstances of the wanderer’s life.”
Then, like a sudden flash, the recollection came to him that the innkeeper had seen his roll of notes, and that the man knew him to be an unattached wayfarer, and consequently fair game for robbery or even murder. The thought set his heart beating in a manner which shamed him; and, though hefought against it resolutely, he permitted himself, nevertheless, to creep over to the door and to slide the clumsy bolt into its socket. He then felt in his pocket to assure himself that his matches were at hand; and, having placed the candle by his bedside, he blew out the light and prepared himself for an uncomfortable night.
For some time he lay quietly upon the bed, fully dressed, his eyes turned to the open window, through which the brilliant stars were visible; but at length sleep began to overcome his forebodings, so that he dozed, and at last passed into unconsciousness.
He awoke with an instant conviction that some sound had disturbed him; and for a moment he felt his pulses hammering as he listened intently. The stars had moved across the heavens during his slumbers, and their position now suggested that dawn was not far off, a fact of which he was profoundly glad, for his mind was filled with a very definite kind of dread, and he was eager to be up and away. Something, he was convinced, had been going on while he slept: he could feel it, as it were, in his bones.
He was about to light the candle when, to his extreme horror, he caught sight of a man’s head slowly rising above the level of the window-sill and blotting out the stars. Jim lay absolutely still, desperately concentrating his brains to meet the situation; and as he did so the figure outside the window, like a menacing black shadow, stealthily raised itself until the arms and shoulders were visible, and he was able to recognize the large proportions of the innkeeper.
The room was in complete darkness, and, realizing that he himself could not be seen, Jim silently extended his hand until his fingers clasped themselves around the brass candlestick at his side. His agitation gave place to the thrill of battle, and, with a bound like that of a wild animal, he sprang to his feet and dashed at the intruder. At the same moment the man clambered into the room; and, an instant later, the two were in contact.
A frenzied blow with the heavy candlestick struck the innkeeper’s uplifted arm, and the knife which he had been carrying fell to the floor. The man darted to recover it, whereat Jim aimed a second blow as he stooped; but, before he could strike, the innkeeper’s left hand crashed into his face, so that he staggered back across the room with the blood pouring from his nose. Regaining his balance, he again rushed forward; and before the other could raise his recovered knife the candlestick descended upon his head, with a most satisfactory thud, and, without a sound, the man fell in a heap upon the floor.
For a moment Jim stood over him, his improvised weapon raised to strike again. He felt the blood streaming from his nose, and, pulling his handkerchief from his pocket, he attempted in vain to arrest the flow, at the same time wondering what next he should do. He could just discern the dark outline of the figure at his feet, but there was no sign of movement, and he wondered whether the man were dead. At the moment he certainly hoped so.
Then, sniffing and panting, he felt for his matchesand struck a light. The candle, which had fallen from its socket, lay on the floor before him; and this he now lit, replacing it in the brass holder which had served him so well. Next, he glanced out of the window, and saw, as he had expected, a ladder leaning against the wall; but, though he could now hear voices in the house, there seemed to be no one at the foot of the ladder, so far as the darkness permitted him to discern.
This appeared, therefore, to be the best means of escape, and, snatching up his hat and slinging his knapsack across his shoulder, he hastened towards the window. As he did so the figure upon the floor showed signs of returning life, and Jim hastily stooped and picked up the man’s ugly-looking knife, while the blood from his nose steadily dripped upon it, upon the clothes of his unconscious assailant, and upon the bare boards.
He was in the act of climbing over the sill when he heard voices at the bedroom door, and saw the bolt rattle. At this he slid down the ladder at break-neck speed, and raced through the darkness as fast as his legs would carry him towards the beach. For a moment he hesitated upon the soft sand, recollecting that in the one direction—the way he had come yesterday—there was no habitation for many miles, while in the other the estuary, of which he had been told, cut him off from the neighbouring town.
Behind him he heard a considerable commotion in the house, and at the lighted window of his abandoned bedroom he saw a figure appear for a moment. The other men, then, had burst into theroom, and in a few moments they would doubtless be after him.
Suddenly he thought of the rowing-boat, and, with a gasp of relief, he ran out on to the rocks. Here he slipped and fell, thereby losing the innkeeper’s knife; but, with hands wet with the blood from his nose, he clutched at the boulders, and clambered forward. A few minutes later he had lifted the boat’s mooring-rope from the rock around which it was fastened, and had pushed out to sea.
For some minutes he rowed at his best speed away from the land, but presently he rested on his oars to listen to the cries and curses which came over the water to his ears out of the darkness. His mood was now exultant, for he had observed on the previous evening that there was no other craft of any kind within sight, and a pull of two or three kilometres would bring him to the neighbouring town. He was now enjoying the adventure, for he felt that it marked the breaking of the long monotony of his days at Eversfield and the beginning of a new and more vivid existence, far removed from the petty incidents of English village life. He could not resist the temptation to shout out some bantering remark to the men upon the beach whom he could not see, and soon his voice was sounding across the dark water, bearing impolite messages to the innkeeper and a few choice words for themselves. Their oaths returned to him out of the night, and set him laughing; and presently he resumed his rowing now with a less frenzied stroke, heading towards the three or four solitary lights which marked his destination.
And thus, as the first light of dawn appearedin the eastern sky, he quietly beached the little boat upon the deserted shore in front of the houses, and stepped out on to the sand. The current had been running strongly against him, and the journey had taken him longer than he had expected; but in the cool night air, under the glorious stars, he had found himself thoroughly happy, and his excitement seemed but to have added zest to his life.
A troublesome question, however, now arose in his mind as to whether he should go at once to the police, or whether it would be wiser to keep silent in regard to his adventure. If he reported the matter and subsequently had to appear in the courts, the pleasant secret of his double identity would have to be revealed. That would be the end of James Easton, for, in the limelight which would be turned upon him, he would be obliged to admit to his real name. On the other hand, he would dearly like to bring the innkeeper and his confederates to justice.
He now, therefore, sat down upon the beach in the dim light of daybreak and carefully thought the matter out in all its aspects; the result being that at length he very reluctantly decided to hold his tongue, and, with the first rays of the sun, to proceed upon his way.
Taking off his boots and socks, and rolling up his trousers, he went back to the boat, and, wading into the water, pushed it out to sea with all his strength, thereafter watching it as it slowly floated back towards the estuary, in which direction the current was travelling. He then went over to a cluster of rocks, behind which he would be unobserved, and there he opened his knapsack and made his toilet,washing the crusted blood from his face and hands and the front of his coat.
When he emerged at length, the sun had risen; and he walked into the little town in an entirely inconspicuous manner. Here he presently ascertained that there was a railway-station, and he observed that a number of people were already making their way thither to catch the early market-train. Nobody took any notice of him as he bought his ticket and entered the compartment, for in appearance he differed little from an ordinary Italian, and he was not called upon to speak at sufficient length to reveal any faults in his accent. This was all to the good, since his sole object now was to leave the neighbourhood of his adventure in order to preserve the secret of his double life. Thus half an hour later he was jogging along back to Pisa, and by mid-morning he was on his way to Florence, none the worse for his adventure, and having suffered no loss with the exception of his walking-stick, his handkerchief, a great deal of blood, and much of his confidence in the Italian peasant.
Arrived at Florence, he engaged a room, in the name of Easton, at a small and quiet hotel, and here he decided to remain for the next few days, and to forget his growing indignation against the murderous innkeeper, since no redress was possible without exposure of his carefully laid plans. His amazement and agitation may thus be imagined when, on the following morning, he read in his newspaper that he was believed to have been murdered.
The account was circumstantial. A police patrol, riding along the beach an hour before dawn, hadcome upon two men acting in what was described as a suspicious manner outside the inn. Questions were being put to them when the innkeeper appeared at a window and shouted out, asking whether their victim had been “finished off.” This led to a search of the house, and to the examination of the disordered and bloodstained bedroom, and to the discovery of a walking-stick bearing the name “J. Tundering-West” upon the silver band, a blood-soaked handkerchief marked J. T.-W., and a postcard addressed by the victim to Mrs. Tundering-West. Thereupon the dazed innkeeper and his friends were arrested, and it was observed that there were spots of blood upon the clothes of the former. A further search, after the sun had risen, had revealed bloodstains leading down to and upon the rocks, whither the body had evidently been carried; while a bloodstained knife, thrown aside at the edge of the water, and marks of a struggle, indicated that the unfortunate man had here been “finished off” before being dropped into the sea.
The arrested men had confessed to being associated with an attempted act of violence, but swore that the intended victim had escaped in the boat, and that one of their number, who was the only guilty party, had fled. This, however, was a palpable lie, for the boat was later found beached at the mouth of the estuary a short distance away, and if it had been used at all, which was not at all certain, it must have been utilized as a means of escape by that one of their number who had bolted.
Meanwhile, the police had ascertained that Mr. Tundering-West had been staying at Genoa threedays previously; and that an Englishman, whose name did not appear in the hotel register, but was probably identical, had stopped at the little Hotel Giovanni in Pisa on the nights previous to the crime. During the day a police-launch had scoured the sea in the neighbourhood, but the body had not been found.
Jim was dazed as he read the amazing words, and for some time thereafter he sat staring in front of him, lost in a maze of speculation. Two thoughts, however, stood out clearly in the confusion of his mind. In the first place he must not allow the innkeeper to suffer the extreme penalty for a crime which fortunately had not been committed; and in the second place he would have to notify Dolly that he was safe.
Presently, therefore, he made his way towards a telegraph office, and then, changing his mind, enquired his way to the police-station. He was feverishly anxious to preserve the secret of his identity with Jim Easton, for that name seemed to represent his freedom, and he was filled with disappointment that all his schemes for his periodical liberty should thus fall to pieces; yet he could not devise a means of preserving his secret, and he hovered, irresolute, between the Scylla of the telegram and the Charybdis of this devastating notification to the police.
He was standing at a street corner, near the telegraph office, racking his brains, when a newspaper boy passed him, selling an evening paper; and he bought a copy in order to read the latest news in regard to his own murder. Great developments, he found, had taken place during the day. Acting uponan anonymous communication, the police had dug up the flagstones of one of the basement rooms of the inn, and there they had found the decomposing body of a certain Italian gentleman who had disappeared some months previously; and, following upon this, the innkeeper had made a dramatic confession. It was true, he declared, that both murders were the work of his hands. In the case of the Italian, the victim had insulted a woman of his acquaintance and a duel had followed; and in the case of the Englishman, the motive had been revenge for an insult to his beloved Italy. He had offered to fight this foreigner like a gentleman, but the stranger had taken a mean advantage of him and had struck him with a candlestick. Thereupon he had stabbed him deeply, as the blood indicated, but not fatally, for there had followed a pretty fight; and at last he had lifted his opponent from the ground and had hurled him straight through the window. Then, contemptuously handing his knife to that one of his friends who had cravenly fled, he had told him to finish the work, and to throw the body to the fishes.
At this Jim’s heart leapt within him, and he laughed aloud. It was now totally unnecessary for him to save the braggart’s neck by revealing the fact that he was alive and unhurt. Indeed, he smiled, he had not the heart to spoil the man’s boastful story. The innkeeper was a proven murderer or manslaughterer, and there was no need to speak up in his defence. The finding of the first victim’s body, and the consequent confession, had completely ended the matter; and now the law could take its course. And upon the heels of this conclusionthere came rushing forward another thought—a thought which had been lurking in the back of his mind ever since he had read the first news of the crime.
“James Tundering-West is dead,” he muttered; “the Squire of Eversfield isdead! But Jim Easton, the vagrant, is alive!”
He struck his breast with his fist, and set off walking aimlessly along the street, away from the telegraph office. Of a sudden, it seemed to him, an incubus had been removed. That fat, leering figure in its tight black coat, which, in his imagination, had come to represent domestic life and village society, had collapsed like a pricked balloon. It had leered at him for the last time, and, with a whistle of escaping air, had shrunk into a little heap, over which he was even now leaping to freedom.
“Jim Easton, the free man, is alive,” sang his heart, “but Dolly’s husband is at the bottom of the sea!”
It is not easy to convey in a few words the turmoil of Jim’s mind during the following days. One cannot say that he was the prey of his conscience, for he believed from the bottom of his heart that he was doing the best thing for Dolly, as well as for himself, in thus allowing the story of his murder to stand. His uncle had lived a double life, and thus had maintained a reputation for virtue. In Jim’s case, he could not long have hidden from the eyes of his neighbours the wretchedness of his marriage, and there was no likelihood that he would have ever set a shining example of nobility to the village; and therefore his supposed extinction could be regarded as one of those pretences which are the basis of society.
Had there been any likelihood of his deception being found out, the case would have been different; but his death had been accepted absolutely, and he did not suppose that there would be any penetrating inquiries or investigations by the police now that the innkeeper had made his lying confession. He was completely “dead,” nor would he ever have to come back to earth again, thereby upsetting any future arrangement of her life which his “widow” might make; for even if he were one day recognized by some English acquaintances he could always put any inquirer in the wrong by showing that he had been none other than “Jim Easton” these many years.
Yet the fear of detection, and the indefinite sense that he was acting in a manner violently opposed to those legalities which he did not understand, but whose existence he realized, kept him in a state of nervous tension and temporarily banished all peace from his mind. He was convinced that Dolly would not grieve for him; yet the manner of his death would be a shock to her, and there were two other persons—Mrs. Darling and Smiley-face—who would feel his loss. They would soon forget him, however.
He recalled Mrs. Spooner’s angry words to him after that day when he had inadvertently interrupted her bicycle-ride: “You haven’t much idea of obligation, have you?” This irresponsibility, of which people complained, was evidently growing upon him, he thought to himself; yet, viewing the matter from another angle, was he not now deliberately acting for the good of everybody concerned, in ending his unfortunate marriage and abandoning his inheritance?
His equanimity, however, gradually returned to him in some measure; and when at length he went back to Rome, and there settled himself comfortably in the obscure little hotel in the Trastevere quarter, he was already beginning at moments to feel a tremendous joy in his recovered liberty.
He knew that he was a deserter, and he was well aware that so he would be called by all nice-minded people. Yet that thought in itself did not trouble him; for the mental standpoint of the wanderer commands an outlook very different from that of the stout citizen. He saw clearly that he had not inhim the stuff of which a constitutional state or a model household is made. He could not be a party to so many of the hypocrisies of social life. He was not a good disciple of the Great Sham, and was so often inclined to “give the show away” when most the illusion ought to have been maintained. He was not a respectable member of the community, nor was he gifted with those methodical and enduring qualities which shape wedlock into a salubrious routine. Perhaps it was that he had too much imagination to be a good citizen, too much finesse to be a good husband. In any case he knew that he would never have been of use to his country, except, perhaps, as a pioneer in a small way (for the world-power of the Anglo-Saxon has been established by the rover and the free lance); or possibly as a sort of intellectual bagman, unconsciously exhibiting the lighter side of the race to foreign and critical eyes.
As the days passed he gave ever less consideration to his attitude, and soon his thoughts of Dolly and his English life had become sporadic and fleeting. Once, as he loitered in the sunny Piazza di Spagna upon a certain Sunday morning, and watched the good folk mounting the hot steps to the church of the Trinita de’ Monti, he irritably argued the matter to himself as though anxious to exorcise it by arriving at some sort of finality. “Dolly will be far happier without me,” he mused. “If I had left her, and was known to be alive, I should harm her by placing upon her the stigma most hateful to her sex—that of the unsuccessful wife. But since I am supposed to be dead, she will benefit trebly: she is rid of a bad husband; she will have the pleasure, veryreal to her, of wearing mourning and nursing a fictitious sorrow; and she may set about the management of her life with a house and a comfortable fortune to add to her attractions. And then, again, from a public point of view, I have avoided the inevitable scandal of my married life by dying before I was driven to drink and debauchery. My memorial tablet in the church will be worth reading!”
His cogitations did not carry him further than this on the present occasion; for a number of white pigeons rose suddenly from the ground near his feet, and circled round the Egyptian obelisk which stands in front of the church, thereby directing his thoughts to the land of the Nile and to the life which he had led before he inherited Eversfield.
On another day, while he was seated in the shade of the trees in the Pincian Gardens, the passing carriages, in which the polite families of Rome were taking the air, led his thoughts back once more to these fading arguments and memories. “Now that I am dead,” he reflected, “Dolly will at last be able to have the carriage-and-pair I had always refused to give her. She will be able to play the part of the little widow in the big carriage: yes!—that will please her far more than the presence of an untidy-looking husband.”
It is to be understood, and perhaps it is to his credit, that he had given the loss of his inheritance never a thought, nor had cared how his money would be spent. He had nearly two thousand pounds in the bank, which was sufficient to provide for his modest needs for three or four years, and further than that he had no power to look. He did notgrudge Dolly the estate; and, indeed, so heartily had he come to dislike Eversfield and all it meant, that he could have wished his worst enemy no greater punishment than to be established there at the manor.
He gazed out through the arch of the trees to the dome of St. Peter’s, rising above the distant houses on the far side of an open space of blazing sunlight; and he breathed a sigh of profound relief that a means of escape had been found from the cage of matrimony and domesticity in which he had been confined. “I used to think,” he mused, “that it would be a wonderful thing to have a wife who would be my refuge and my sanctuary; but I see now that that was a delusion and a weakness. It is far better for a man to stand on his own two legs, and to make his own heart his place of comfort, and what he looks out on through its windows his entertainment.” Yet even so, he was aware that this statement of the case did not cover the whole ground; for there certainly were times when he suffered from a sense of tremendous loneliness.
Then came the trial of the innkeeper, and for a short time he was obliged to return to the past; yet now he viewed matters with complete detachment: it was as though he were in no way identical with James Tundering-West, nor ever had been. He read in the papers, without a tremor, how his wife had identified the walking-stick, handkerchief, and postcard, which had been sent to England for the purpose of that formality. He was mildly relieved to find that his dealings with the diamonds had not been traced, and that his movements in France, andhis subsequent visit to Genoa and Pisa, were but roughly sketched in as having no bearing upon the actual crime. The innkeeper’s declarations quite amused him, and he was hardly indignant to find that the man had become a popular figure, and that his sentence was wholly inadequate.
The close of the trial marked Jim’s complete emancipation. With a wide mental gesture, which was very inadequately expressed by his twisted smile and the shrug of his shoulders, he dismissed the tale of his marriage from the history of his life, and turned his attention wholly to that all-embracing present, which is the true wanderer’s domain. The “I was” and the “I shall be” of the citizen’s domestic life was lost in the great “I am” of the vagabond. He was no longer the lord of a compact little estate, bounded by grey stone walls and green hedges. He was the squire vagrant; he was enfeoffed of the whole wide world.
In the first exultation of his final freedom he decided to leave Rome. The true vagrant does not move from place to place in conscious search of knowledge or experience: he has no purpose in his movements. He travels onwards merely to satisfy an undefined appetite for life. The difference between the real nomad and the ordinary traveller is this, that the latter passes with definite intent from one stopping-place to the next, and the intervening road is but the means of approach to a desired goal; but the nomad has no goal, or it might be said that the road itself is his goal.
In Jim’s case—to use an illustrative exaggeration—if he were moving south, and the dust were toblow in his face, he would turn and travel north. Thus, when he made his departure from Rome he took his direction almost at random. He had no ties, no duties, no cares. A knapsack upon his shoulders, and some loose change jingling in his pocket, a roll of notes stuffed into his wallet, and at least three languages ready to his tongue, he set out to range over his new estate, the world, having the feeling in his heart that he had come back to the freedom of youth from a misty prison of premature age which was already fast fading from his memory.
His route would be difficult to record and puzzling to follow. For days together he lingered at little inns where a few francs procured him excellent fare; now he passed on by road or rail, by river or lake, to new districts, and new settings for the comedy of his life; and now he came to rest under the awnings of some small hotel in the heart of a sun-bathed city.
During a spell of particularly hot weather he went north to Lake Maggiore, where, on the cool slopes of Mergozzolo, he spent a number of dreamy days at a little whitewashed inn, from whose terrace he could look down upon the lake and beyond it to the blue and hazy plains of Lombardy and Piedmont. He worked here on the polishing of his verses, writing also a longish poem upon the subject of freedom; and in the evenings he sat for hours under the stars, talking to the proprietor and his wife, or playing his guitar, and smoking the little cigarettes in which the Italian Government so wisely specializes.
One incident which occurred at this time may berecorded. He was making a journey by train one piping-hot day, and was seated alone in a smoking compartment, which was connected by a door with another compartment where smoking was not permitted. During a long run between two stations this door was opened and another traveller entered, carrying a small portmanteau and a bundle of rugs. He was a stout, florid, prosperous-looking business man, whose English nationality was entirely obvious, and when he explained in very bad Italian that he was changing his seat in order to smoke a pipe, Jim answered him in his mother tongue, and soon they passed into casual conversation.
“People on these Italian railways,” the stranger said, “seem to smoke in any carriage; but I, personally, feel that one ought to stick to the rules, and only do so in the compartments specially provided for the purpose.”
“Quite right, I’m sure,” Jim replied, having no pronounced views on the subject, but wishing to be polite.
“That is what these foreigners lack—a sense of neighborly duty,” the man went on. “Don’t you think so? I always feel that England is what she is because our people always consider the other fellow. We pull together and help each other.”
He enlarged upon this subject, and was still citing instances in support of his argument, when the train pulled up at a small station, where a halt of ten minutes or so was announced by an official upon the platform. Thereupon a number of passengers alighted from the train and made their way through the blazing sunlight to a refreshment stall whichstood in the cool shade of a dusty tree in the station yard, just beyond the barriers.
Jim was in lazy mood, and did not join this throng of thirsty humanity; but his companion, who was feeling the heat, left his seat and followed the hurrying crowd.
At length the bell rang, and the guard blew his horn; and Jim, suddenly awakening from a reverie, became aware that his fellow traveller had not returned, and hastily leaned out of the window to see what had become of him. The driver sounded his whistle, and set the engine in motion; and at the same moment Jim saw a fat and frantic figure struggling to pass the barrier, and being held back by excited officials, who, it seemed, were refusing to allow him to attempt to board the moving train.
Jim waved his arm and received some sort of answering signal of distress. Instantly the thought flashed into his mind that here was an opportunity to display that sense of obligation of which they had spoken, and to aid a fellow creature in trouble. The man’s baggage! He must throw it out of the train, so that, at any rate, the owner in his dilemma should not be separated from his belongings.
Snatching the portmanteau and the rugs from the seat where they rested, he pushed them through the window, and had the satisfaction of seeing them roll to safety upon the platform at the feet of a bewildered porter. Again he waved to the struggling man, and pointed repeatedly to the baggage with downward jabbing finger; then, having thus performed what he considered to be a most neighbourly act of quick-witted succour, he sank back into hiscorner seat and laughed to himself at the incident.
A smile still suffused his face when, several minutes later, the door from the next compartment opened and the portly Englishman made his appearance.