THE THIRTEENTH MAN
THE THIRTEENTH MAN
A strange, mournful song broke the stillness of a hot July afternoon, and caused two pedestrians to come to a halt in a lane on which dust lay thick.
On either side were high banks, surmounted by unclipped hedges.
One of the pedestrians, a young and athletic man, had climbed the bank nearer to him in a second, and was peering through a gap in the hedge, where nothing met his gaze but miles of smiling country, dotted by farms at long intervals, a bungalow covered with rambler roses, and a white house on the border of a wood.
“Can you see anybody, sir?” asked the man in the lane, who was dressed as a farmer.
The weird singing rose again.
“I should take it for a sea-gull, sir,” said the puzzled farmer, “except that we are a good five miles from the sea here.”
The young man sprang back into the lane, causing a cloud of white dust to rise. His clean-shaven face had a troubled expression.
“It sounded to me like a woman chanting a dirge.”
“I expect it is some rascal of a boy amusing himself,” said the farmer reassuringly. “A most unholy noise to make, I call it.”
He looked uneasily at his companion. IfMr.Barrimore were a nervous sort of man he might not take the bungalow, and the farmer wanted to let it.
The bungalow looked lovely now, covered by roses, but it was undeniably lonely at any time, and in winter desolate enough. He followed up his remark:
“If you come to live in the country,Mr.Barrimore, you will have to get used to queer noises. The owls at night hoot, and the way theybreathewould almost make you believe it was a human being. But you soon get to take no heed to country sounds. If book-writing is your trade, you couldn’t find a better place to carry it on in than my bungalow. Wonderfully pretty it looks now, with the roses out. We shall be coming to it at the turn of the road.”
“I saw it just now,Mr.Pickett, from the top of the bank,” said Barrimore. “It looked charming. But I can’t get that sad singing out of my head. It was to me a heart-break set to music. But”—(Barrimore smiled, and for the first time his companion noted that the young man was good-looking)—“but authors are imaginative, and I am willing to accept your view of the case. You seem to think I am nervous!” (He smiled again.) “But I have never had that character. Here we are!”
On the right stood the big red-tiled bungalow, with its white verandah and its wealth of red rambler roses.
Pickett jingled a bunch of keys as he approached the padlocked gate.
“You see, sir, that the garden is in good order,”he remarked, as he unfastened the gate. “And the water in the well is beautiful, and cold as can be, even this weather. The painter-chap who built it spared no expense, and there’s flooring put down in yonder clear space for a stable, if you should like me to put one up, which I will do, if you take the bungalow for three years.”
“I think I can promise to do that if I like the place,” said Barrimore rather absently. “One can always shut it up, you know.”
Pickett stared. He could not understand the wastefulness suggested by the idea of paying rent and shutting up the place. However, it was all right so far as he personally was concerned, and this well-dressed young man, who carried a gold cigar-case, had probably a big banking account.
The interior of the bungalow turned out to be ideal. There were six rooms in all—two reception-rooms, three bedrooms and a kitchen. The scheme of decoration was charming, and had evidently been carefully thought out by the “painter-chap” Pickett had referred to.
Above all, there was a splendid bathroom.
This last item decided Barrimore to take the bungalow. To him who revelled in a cold morning tub it was of no consequence that there was no means of heating the bath.
“You may start on the stable as soon as you like,” he said to the delighted farmer. “I shall come in with a manservant next week. I suppose I can put up a saddle-horse at your farm till the stable is ready? I shall need to ride into Hastings frequently at first.”
“Oh, certainly, sir. I have plenty of stable room,” responded Pickett.
While the farmer was locking the door, Barrimore,took out a penknife and cut some roses to take back for his mother, who loved little attentions.
“Poor old mummy!” he said to himself. “She is a bit sore about my wanting to be away from home, but Ican’tstand Uncle Robert’s quotations!”
Barrimore had walked the whole five miles from Hastings to Pickett’s Farm at Gissing, having seen an advertisement of the bungalow, and he was going to walk the whole distance back, to get rid of the irritability caused by Uncle Robert’s quotations.
Uncle Robert was his mother’s brother, and had been christened Robert because his surname was Burns, and he had evidently conceived the idea that the mantle of the poet after whom he was named had descended upon him. He read incessantly, and remembered all he read. It was not his fault if everyone else did not remember it also. He also wrote verse.
Uncle Robert had made his home with his sister since she had been a widow, and Philip Barrimore, who had taken up literature as a career, found at last that home was an impossible place to work in.
If Uncle Robert was a nuisance, he was sublimely ignorant of the fact. He was of a singularly cheerful disposition, and it was impossible to ruffle his sweet temper. Even this last fact was an annoyance to Barrimore, for had Uncle Robert fired up occasionally, his nephew would have felt less of a pig (as he expressed it) in snubbing him.
Mrs. Barrimore, a sweet little woman, over forty, and looking less, had been much exercised in spirit to keep her idolized and only son from wounding her idolized and only brother; hence, she had consented to Philip’s plan of getting a little place in the country to work in. He would be near enough forfrequent visits, and would have the conditions he craved for his work.
Nevertheless, she felt sad that he should not reside under her roof.
Barrimore reached the West Hill at Hastings as the sun was setting. The sky was flooded with exquisite color. The sea, calm and unruffled, and of a lovely blue, was dotted over with sailing craft.
It was low tide, and within the harbor (so called, though it had never been completed) little naked boys ran, throwing pink reflections on the wet sand, while fishermen lounged against their boats, which they would soon be getting ready for the night’s work.
“I shall miss the sea,” thought Barrimore regretfully; “but, after all, I can soon ride in from Gissing.”
Before making his way to Hawk’s Nest (his mother’s house), which was situated near the Alexandra Park, he walked across the hill to the point where the entrance toSt.Clement’s Caves is situated, and looked down at the old town, with its quaint red-roofed houses, and then across to the little churchyard of All Saints on the slope of the East Hill.
As his eyes rested on this churchyard they suddenly dimmed.
Under a white cross, like one he now saw, rested the woman he had loved. Woman? Eweretta Alvin had been but a girl when she had suddenly ceased to be, and his heart lay buried with her away in Canada.
At five-and-twenty Barrimore had vowed himself to bachelorhood, which was his only point of resemblance to his Uncle Robert Burns.
Never again would he love, he told himself, for which reason he allowed himself a certain freedom with the women-folk who gathered about his mother. Some of these were pretty girls, too, and charming enoughto stir any ordinary man’s pulses. Phyllis Lane, for instance, was bewitching, if not exactly pretty.
Barrimore suddenly remembered that on this particular day there had been a garden-party at his mother’s, and Phyllis and her father, Colonel Lane, were staying on to dinner. He must hurry or he would be late.