Arthur Woodroffe's true defence of his action in leaving Peckham did
not occur to him until after he had parted with Somers.
In the course of the ten days that had passed since his sudden arrival
at a decision, he had fallen into a perfect intoxication of spending.
In that time he had spent over two hundred pounds.
And with that expenditure he had broken another habit of thought.
His early life had always been overshadowed by the cares and threats
of respectable poverty, and when his last financial responsibility
had been closed by his mother's death, eighteen months earlier, he
had continued to save money, with the prudent thought that he might
presently need capital.
But just as he had suddenly and surprisingly realised that there was
no compelling reason why he should stay on as Somers' assistant at
Peckham, so, also, he had realised when he began his shopping, that
he might, if he wished, do the thing in style. He was beginning a new
life. He was young and competent, and he had a profession. He would let
the future take care of itself.
And here was one of his fantasies coming true; he would have everything
new and clean. He remembered his dream of stripping naked and plunging
into a deep wide river, a sweet and rapid flood of purifying water;
of swimming many miles until he came to a new land where vermin were
unknown; and of walking out of the river, cool, and refreshed, to
dress--he had never told any one that--in white silk from head to foot.
Nothing but the smoothest silk would do. He had seen that silk in
imagination glimmering with the sheen of a fine pearl. He smiled now at
the extravagance of that fancy, but the temptation to buy an entirely
new outfit was too strong to be resisted. He had deserved it. The
impulse marked his real recovery from the effects of the war.
The world owed him five years of youth! That was the true defence of
his action in leaving Peckham. He saw his justification with astounding
clearness as he stood on Westminster Bridge looking up the river,
half an hour before his train was timed to leave Charing Cross--the
train that was to take him to Hartling for his promised week-end. In a
re-action against his orgie of spending, he had come as far as that by
tram, lugging his new kit-bag and dressing-case. The tram would have
taken him on to Charing Cross, but when it had stopped close to his
old hospital, he had felt an urgent desire to see the river from the
old standpoint. The thought of his bags had not deterred him. He was
bursting with vigour and energy that morning.
Society, the World, Life owed him five years for those he had given.
The years from twenty-two to twenty-seven. He had joined up in August,
1914, had been sent down to Salisbury Plain for his training, and had
been in France by the summer of next year. He had been lucky in some
ways. He had not been wounded or gassed or suffered from shell-shock,
and in the following winter he had been combed out and sent back to
the hospital for two years to finish his training, before returning to
France as a Lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. But looking back now, it seemed
to him that he had had no relaxation in all that time. He had taken the
war too seriously and the shadow of it had lain over him. If it had
not been for that, he would not have joined dear old Bob Somers on the
very day that he had been demobilised. He had got the habit of being
strenuous and self-sacrificing and all the rest of it, and the habit,
or whatever it was, had apparently dropped from him almost miraculously
in the course of that conversation. It was unquestionably gone. He felt
himself, unexpectedly and delightfully, not only free but also young
again. He must write to Bob and explain that theory of the lost years
of youth and the world's debit account. He would not be hard on his
debtor. He would not exact a full repayment of the original loan. He
would take only two years. After that he would go back to the strenuous
habit of self-sacrifice and leave his youth behind.
He could recover the very spirit of it in this place. How often he
had glanced down from the end of a ward and taken back to his work a
picture of the river, of the bridge, or of the Gothic dignities of the
Houses of Parliament. In retrospect those pictures were all coloured
with the vivid emotions of youth. He could place some of them with the
distinctness of a clearly remembered dream. There was, for instance,
that wonderful morning in February, mild and clear as a day in April,
associated with the thought that he was playing for his hospital in one
of the "Rugger" cup ties that afternoon. Great days, those were; and
in effect, he was physically little older now than he was then. He was
splendidly fit.
He laid hold again of his two bags, and strode triumphantly across the
bridge.
And that mood held, even mounted, unchecked by the deliberations of
the South-Eastern and Chatham train service. Indeed, the semi-torpid
movements of the railway servants on the branch line to which he
changed at the junction afforded a pleasant contrast to his own
exuberance. He was beginning life again. Everything was coming right.
He had visions of some delightful, improbable enlargement of his
condition. Old Kenyon might take a fancy to him. Some one in the house,
some special favourite of the old man's, might be taken seriously ill,
and Arthur Woodroffe, the brilliant young general practitioner from
Peckham, would work a miracle at the eleventh hour. Old Mr Kenyon's
gratitude would take a practical form, and the thing was done. There
were other variants of the dream, but this seemed to be the most
promising.
A car was waiting for him at Hartling Station, but neither his aunt nor
any of his connections by marriage had come to meet him. Arthur had
his bags put into the tonneau and sat in front. He wanted to talk to
some one, and found the chauffeur quite willing for conversation. They
began with the obvious subject of motors and presently the chauffeur
volunteered the statement that the Vauxhall in which they were riding
was not their best car.
"Use this for station work and short trips mostly, sir," he said. "But
Mr Kenyon always has the Rolls-Royce for going up to town. Never goes
any other way. Wonderful old gentleman, Mr Kenyon, sir."
"I haven't seen him for twenty years," Arthur said. "He's getting on
for ninety, isn't he?"
"Ninety-one last October, sir," the chauffeur told him, "and he'd make
a good seventy in a manner of speaking. A bit absent-minded sometimes,
he don't always hear you when you speak to him; but no doubt that's
because he's thinking o' something else. He's not what you call deaf,
not in the least."
"Good Lord. Wonderful!" Arthur commented. His mind was engaged in
framing a tentative essay on the causes of disability in old age, more
particularly with reference to arterio-sclerosis, but he reserved
that as being a shade too technical. "Though there's no real reason,
you know," he said, "why we shouldn't live to be a hundred or even a
hundred and twenty. There's a fellow in Asia Minor who is supposed to
be a hundred and fifty."
"I suppose not, sir," the chauffeur replied without enthusiasm, and
added, apparently as an afterthought, "You're a doctor, I was told,
sir."
Arthur nodded. "I haven't come down here professionally, though," he
said.
"No, sir; I shouldn't say as Mr Kenyon had much faith in doctors...."
The chauffeur's sentence tailed off on a high note, with an effect of
there being more to come; also he reduced the pace of the car as if he
had something of importance to add before they reached the house.
"I've wondered sometimes, sir," he continued, after a short pause,
"whether he oughtn't to--to take advice, as they say. Them fits of
absent-mindedness I was telling you about, for instance, come on very
queer sometimes. It's like as if he was sound asleep with his eyes wide
open. Scared me once or twice he has. I thought perhaps being a doctor
you might be able to say if it was anything serious. Of course, being
ninety-one...."
Arthur would have liked to give a ready diagnosis of this abnormal
condition, but his expertise was not equal to the task, and he fell
back on the usual defence of his profession.
"Couldn't possibly say without examining him," he said. "It might be
due to one of several conditions."
The car running down a slight incline with a free engine had almost
stopped. The chauffeur appeared to be deep in thought.
"At Mr Kenyon's age ..." he began tentatively
"One would not expect him to be quite the man he was at twenty-eight,"
Arthur supplied.
"Exactly, sir, one wouldn't," the chauffeur replied in the tone of one
aroused to a consciousness of his immediate duties; and he let in the
clutch and speeded up the car with an effect of turning his attention
to more pressing affairs.
For the last quarter of a mile they had been running alongside a high
brick wall, and as they now swerved in between a pair of wide-open iron
gates, Arthur realised that the rather ugly wall was the boundary of Mr
Kenyon's property.
The contrast between the outside and the inside was, as perhaps it was
designed to be, sudden and startling. From the dusty side road flanked
on one side by that erection of crude brickwork, he was transported
without any kind of preparation into a finished and extensively
cultivated garden of unusual extent and beauty. Seen from that entrance
by the little lodge, the garden wonderfully displayed itself. It lay
on a moderate slope, lifting up in a steady rise from the entrance
gates to the climax of the house, that spread itself along the crest
of the hill with an effect of dignified watchfulness. And the designer
of that garden had had fine natural material to work upon other than
the slope that provided the excuse for that triple tier of terraces
with their shallow stone steps and low balustrading. He had had, for
example, a fine selection of forest trees, elm, oak, and beech, with
as a contrast a plantation of larches and silver birch bounding the
estate on the east side. Also he had had an abundance of running water.
A little river, its point of entrance hidden by the close shrubberies
and plantations that shut out all sight of the ugly boundary wall
on the garden side, cascaded not too artificially, out of obscurity
into the sunlight, ran as a decently restrained little river for a
hundred yards or so between close-cut lawns, the upper one of which was
bordered by a row of graceful wych elms; and then spread itself into
an irregular lake, over which the main drive to the house was carried
by the spring of a slender bridge. But any catalogue of that garden's
innumerable "features" must inevitably convey a false impression.
Whoever had planned it, had had the genius to conceive his effect as a
whole. It was arranged, composed, to display itself from the entrance
lodge as a broad mass that was presented to the mind as a miniature
park, abounding with natural opportunities, which had for many years
been scrupulously kept, planted, and mown. And seen thus on the broad,
it could not be classified as belonging either to the formal or the
landscape type; rather it had the air of a diligently cultivated
suburban garden enormously enlarged. There was something new, bright,
almost deliberately factitious in its pretensions.
The chauffeur had but one comment to offer as they spun up the long
curve of the gravel drive to the house. As they crossed the stone
bridge over the pond, he pointed to the right, indicating a rough-cast
and half-timbered building nearly hidden by the trees of the larch
plantation into which the little river plunged out of sight.
"Power house, sir," he explained. "We do all our own lighting and
pumping by water-power. Pleased to show you over, sir, if you have
time. Nice little plant we've got."
Arthur found a sense of satisfaction in the thought of the completeness
of the place.