HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK
I
The circumstance that had intrigued me for so long was determined with
an abruptness only less remarkable than the surprise of the onset. Two
deaths within six months brought to me, the first, a competence,
the second, release from gall and bitterness. For the first time
in my life I was a free man. At forty one can still look forward,
and I put the past behind me and made plans for the future. There
was that book of mine still waiting to be written.
It was wonderful how the detail of it all came back to me--the
plan of it, the thread of development, even the very phrases that
I had toyed with. The thought of the book brought back a train of
associations. There was a phrase I had coined as I had walked out
from Ailesworth to Stoke-Underhill; a chapter I had roughed out
the day I went to see Ginger Stott at Pym. It seemed to me that the
whole conception of the book was associated in some way with that
neighbourhood. I remembered at last that I had first thought of
writing it after my return from America, on the day that I had had
that curious experience with the child in the train. It occurred to
me that by a reversal of the process, I might regain many more of
my original thoughts; that by going to live, temporarily perhaps,
in the neighbourhood of Ailesworth, I might revive other associations.
The picture of Pym presented itself to me very clearly. I remembered
that I had once thought that Pym was a place to which I might retire
one day in order to write the things I wished to write. I decided to
make the dream a reality, and I wrote to Mrs. Berridge at the Wood
Farm, asking her if she could let me have her rooms for the spring,
summer, and autumn.
II
I was all aglow with excitement on the morning that I set out for the
Hampden Hills. This was change, I thought, freedom, adventure. This
was the beginning of life, my real entry into the joy of living.
The world was alight with the fire of growth. May had come with
a clear sky and a torrent of green was flowing over field, hedge,
and wood. I remember that I thanked "whatever gods there be," that
one could live so richly in the enjoyment of these things.
III
Farmer Bates met me at Great Hittenden Station. His was the only
available horse and cart at Pym, for the Berridges were in a very
small way, and it is doubtful if they could have made both ends meet
if Mrs. Berridge had not done so well by letting her two spare rooms.
I have a great admiration for Farmer Bates and Mrs. Berridge. I regret
intensely that they should both have been unhappily married. If they
had married each other they would undoubtedly have made a success
of life.
Bates was a Cockney by birth, but always he had had an ambition to take
a farm, and after twenty years of work as a skilled mechanic he had
thrown up a well-paid job, and dared the uncertainties which beset the
English farmer. That venture was a constant bone of strife between him
and his wife. Mrs. Bates preferred the town. It has always seemed to
me that there was something fine about Bates and his love for the land.
"Good growing weather, Mr. Bates," I said, as I climbed up into
the cart.
"Shouldn't be sorry to see some more rain," replied Bates, and damped
my ardour for a moment.
Just before we turned into the lane that leads up the long hill to Pym,
we passed a ramshackle cart, piled up with a curious miscellany of
ruinous furniture. A man was driving, and beside him sat a slatternly
woman and a repulsive-looking boy of ten or twelve years old, with
a great swollen head and an open, slobbering mouth.
I was startled. I jumped to the conclusion that this was the child
I had seen in the train, the son of Ginger Stott.
As we slowed down to the ascent of the long hill, I said to Bates:
"Is that Stott's boy?"
Bates looked at me curiously. "Why, no," he said. "Them's the
'Arrisons. 'Arrison's dead now; he was a wrong 'un, couldn't make
a job of it, nohow. They used to live 'ere, five or six year ago,
and now 'er 'usband's dead, Mrs. 'Arrison's coming back with the boy
to live. Worse luck! We thought we was shut of 'em."
"Oh!" I said. "The boy's an idiot, I suppose."
"'Orrible," replied Bates, shaking his head, "'orrible; can't speak
nor nothing; goes about bleating and baa-ing like an old sheep."
I looked round, but the ramshackle cart was hidden by the turn of
the road. "Does Stott still live at Pym?" I asked.
"Not Ginger," replied Bates. "He lives at Ailesworth. Mrs. Stott and
'er son lives here."
"The boy's still alive then?" I asked.
"Yes," said Bates.
"Intelligent child?" I asked.
"They say," replied Bates. "Book-learnin' and such. They say 'e's
read every book in Mr. Challis's librairy."
"Does he go to school?"
"No. They let 'im off. Leastways Mr. Challis did. They say the Reverend
Crashaw, down at Stoke, was fair put out about it."
I thought that Bates emphasised the "on dit" nature of his information
rather markedly. "What do you think of him?" I asked.
"Me?" said Bates. "I don't worry my 'ead about him. I've got too much
to do." And he went off into technicalities concerning the abundance
of charlock on the arable land of Pym. He called it "garlic." I saw
that it was typical of Bates that he should have too much to do. I
reflected that his was the calling which begot civilisation.
IV
The best and surest route from Pym to the Wood Farm is, appropriately,
by way of the wood; but in wet weather the alternative of various
cart tracks that wind among the bracken and shrub of the Common, is
preferable in many ways. May had been very dry that year, however,
and Farmer Bates chose the wood. The leaves were still light on the
beeches. I remember that as I tried to pierce the vista of stems
that dipped over the steep fall of the hill, I promised myself many
a romantic exploration of the unknown mysteries beyond.
Everything was so bright that afternoon that nothing, I believe,
could have depressed me. When I looked round the low, dark room with
its one window, a foot from the ground and two from the ceiling,
I only thought that I should be out-of-doors all the time. It amused
me that I could touch the ceiling with my head by standing on tiptoe,
and I laughed at the framed "presentation plates" from old Christmas
numbers on the walls. These things are merely curious when the sun
is shining and it is high May, and one is free to do the desired work
after twenty years in a galley.
V
At a quarter to eight that evening I saw the sun set behind the
hills. As I wandered reflectively down the lane that goes towards
Challis Court, a blackbird was singing ecstatically in a high elm; here
and there a rabbit popped out and sat up, the picture of precocious
curiosity. Nature seemed to be standing in her doorway for a careless
half-hour's gossip, before putting up the shutters to bar the robbers
who would soon be about their work of the night.
It was still quite light as I strolled back over the Common, and I
chose a path that took me through a little spinney of ash, oak, and
beech, treading carefully to avoid crushing the tender crosiers of
bracken that were just beginning to break their way through the soil.
As I emerged from the little clump of wood, I saw two figures going
away from me in the direction of Pym.
One was that of a boy wearing a cricket-cap; he was walking
deliberately, his hands hanging at his sides; the other figure was a
taller boy, and he threw out his legs in a curious, undisciplined way,
as though he had little control over them. At first sight I thought
he was not sober.
The two passed out of sight behind a clump of hawthorn, but once I
saw the smaller figure turn and face the other, and once he made a
repelling gesture with his hands.
It occurred to me that the smaller boy was trying to avoid his
companion; that he was, in one sense, running away from him, that
he walked as one might walk away from some threatening animal,
deliberately--to simulate the appearance of courage.
I fancied the bigger boy was the idiot Harrison I had seen that
afternoon, and Farmer Bates's "We hoped we were shut of him," recurred
to me. I wondered if the idiot were dangerous or only a nuisance.
I took the smaller boy to be one of the villagers' children. I noticed
that his cricket-cap had a dark patch as though it had been mended
with some other material.
The impression which I received from this trivial affair was one
of disappointment. The wood and the Common had been so deserted by
humanity, so given up to nature, that I felt the presence of the
idiot to be a most distasteful intrusion. "If that horrible thing is
going to haunt the Common there will be no peace or decency," was the
idea that presented itself. "I must send him off, the brute," was the
rider. But I disliked the thought of being obliged to drive him away.
VI
The next morning I did not go on the Common; I was anxious to avoid
a meeting with the Harrison idiot. I had been debating whether I
should drive him away if I met him. Obviously I had no more right
on the Common than he had--on the other hand, he was a nuisance,
and I did not see why I should allow him to spoil all my pleasure
in that ideal stretch of wild land which pressed on three sides of
the Wood Farm. It was a stupid quandary of my own making; but I am
afraid it was rather typical of my mental attitude. I am prone to set
myself tasks, such as this eviction of the idiot from common ground,
and equally prone to avoid them by a process of procrastination.
By way of evasion I walked over to Deane Hill and surveyed the
wonderful panorama of neat country that fills the basin between the
Hampden and the Quainton Hills. Seen from that height, it has something
the effect of a Dutch landscape, it all looks so amazingly tidy. Away
to the left I looked over Stoke-Underhill. Ailesworth was a blur in the
hollow, but I could distinguish the high fence of the County Ground.
I sat all the morning on Deane Hill, musing and smoking, thinking of
such things as Ginger Stott, and the match with Surrey. I decided that
I must certainly go and see Stott's queer son, the phenomenon who had,
they say, read all the books in Mr. Challis's library. I wondered
what sort of a library this Challis had, and who he was. I had never
heard of him before. I think I must have gone to sleep for a time.
When Mrs. Berridge came to clear away my dinner--I dined, without
shame, at half-past twelve--I detained her with conversation. Presently
I asked about little Stott.
"He's a queer one, that's what he is," said Mrs. Berridge. She was
a neat, comely little woman, rather superior to her station, and it
seemed to me, certainly superior to her clod of a husband.
"A great reader, Farmer Bates tells me," I said.
Mrs. Berridge passed that by. "His mother's in trouble about him
this morning," she said. "She's such a nice, respectable woman, and
has all her milk and eggs and butter off of us. She was here this
morning while you were out, sir, and, what I could make of it that
'Arrison boy had been chasing her boy on the Common last night."
"Oh!" I said with sudden enlightenment. "I believe I saw them." At
the back of my mind I was struggling desperately with a vague
remembrance. It may sound incredible, but I had only the dimmest
memory of my later experience of the child. The train incident was
still fresh in my mind, but I could not remember what Stott had told
me when I talked with him by the pond. I seemed to have an impression
that the child had some strange power of keeping people at a distance;
or was I mixing up reality with some Scandinavian fairy tale?
"Very likely, sir," Mrs. Berridge went on. "What upset Mrs. Stott
was that her boy's never upset by anything--he has a curious way
of looking at you, sir, that makes you wish you wasn't there; but
from what Mrs. Stott says, this 'Arrison boy wasn't to be drove off,
anyhow, and her son came in quite flurried like. Mrs. Stott seemed
quite put out about it."
Doubtless I might have had more information from my landlady, but I
was struggling to reconstruct that old experience which had slipped
away from me, and I turned back to the book I had been pretending to
read. Mrs. Berridge was one of those unusual women--for her station
in life--who know when to be silent, and she finished her clearing
away without initiating any further remarks.
When she had finished I went out on to the Common and looked for the
pond where I had talked with Ginger Stott.
I found it after a time, and then I began to gather up the threads
I had dropped.
It all came back to me, little by little. I remembered that talk I
had had with him, his very gestures; I remembered how he had spoken of
habits, or the necessity for the lack of them, and that took me back
to the scene in the British Museum Reading-Room, and to my theory. I
was suddenly alive to that old interest again.
I got up and walked eagerly in the direction of Mrs. Stott's cottage.