“Don't you see, brother, I was reading yesterday the Gospel
about Christ, the little Father; how He suffered, how He walked
on the earth. I suppose you have heard about it?”
“Indeed, I have,” replied Stepanuitch; “but we are people in
darkness; we can't read.”--TOLSTOI.
Mr. Henry Bosengate, of the London Stock Exchange, seated himself in his
car that morning during the great war with a sense of injury. Major in
a Volunteer Corps; member of all the local committees; lending this very
car to the neighbouring hospital, at times even driving it himself for
their benefit; subscribing to funds, so far as his diminished income
permitted--he was conscious of being an asset to the country, and one
whose time could not be wasted with impunity. To be summoned to sit on
a jury at the local assizes, and not even the grand jury at that! It was
in the nature of an outrage.
Strong and upright, with hazel eyes and dark eyebrows, pinkish-brown
cheeks, a forehead white, well-shaped, and getting high, with greyish
hair glossy and well-brushed, and a trim moustache, he might have been
taken for that colonel of Volunteers which indeed he was in a fair way
of becoming.
His wife had followed him out under the porch, and stood bracing her
supple body clothed in lilac linen. Red rambler roses formed a sort
of crown to her dark head; her ivory-coloured face had in it just a
suggestion of the Japanese.
Mr. Bosengate spoke through the whirr of the engine:
“I don't expect to be late, dear. This business is ridiculous. There
oughtn't to be any crime in these days.”
His wife--her name was Kathleen--smiled. She looked very pretty and
cool, Mr. Bosengate thought. To him bound on this dull and stuffy
business everything he owned seemed pleasant--the geranium beds beside
the gravel drive, his long, red-brick house mellowing decorously in its
creepers and ivy, the little clock-tower over stables now converted to
a garage, the dovecote, masking at the other end the conservatory
which adjoined the billiard-room. Close to the red-brick lodge his two
children, Kate and Harry, ran out from under the acacia trees, and waved
to him, scrambling bare-legged on to the low, red, ivy-covered wall
which guarded his domain of eleven acres. Mr. Bosengate waved back,
thinking: 'Jolly couple--by Jove, they are!' Above their heads, through
the trees, he could see right away to some Downs, faint in the July heat
haze. And he thought: 'Pretty a spot as one could have got, so close to
Town!'
Despite the war he had enjoyed these last two years more than any of
the ten since he built “Charmleigh” and settled down to semi-rural
domesticity with his young wife. There had been a certain piquancy, a
savour added to existence, by the country's peril, and all the public
service and sacrifice it demanded. His chauffeur was gone, and one
gardener did the work of three. He enjoyed-positively enjoyed, his
committee work; even the serious decline of business and increase of
taxation had not much worried one continually conscious of the national
crisis and his own part therein. The country had wanted waking up,
wanted a lesson in effort and economy; and the feeling that he had not
spared himself in these strenuous times, had given a zest to those quiet
pleasures of bed and board which, at his age, even the most patriotic
could retain with a good conscience. He had denied himself many
things--new clothes, presents for Kathleen and the children, travel, and
that pine-apple house which he had been on the point of building when
the war broke out; new wine, too, and cigars, and membership of the
two Clubs which he had never used in the old days. The hours had seemed
fuller and longer, sleep better earned--wonderful, the things one could
do without when put to it! He turned the car into the high road, driving
dreamily for he was in plenty of time. The war was going pretty well
now; he was no fool optimist, but now that conscription was in force,
one might reasonably hope for its end within a year. Then there would be
a boom, and one might let oneself go a little. Visions of theatres and
supper with his wife at the Savoy afterwards, and cosy night drives
back into the sweet-smelling country behind your own chauffeur once
more teased a fancy which even now did not soar beyond the confines of
domestic pleasures. He pictured his wife in new dresses by Jay--she
was fifteen years younger than himself, and “paid for dressing” as they
said. He had always delighted--as men older than their wives will--in
the admiration she excited from others not privileged to enjoy her
charms. Her rather queer and ironical beauty, her cool irreproachable
wifeliness, was a constant balm to him. They would give dinner parties
again, have their friends down from town, and he would once more enjoy
sitting at the foot of the dinner table while Kathleen sat at the head,
with the light soft on her ivory shoulders, behind flowers she had
arranged in that original way of hers, and fruit which he had grown in
his hot-houses; once more he would take legitimate interest in the wine
he offered to his guests--once more stock that Chinese cabinet wherein
he kept cigars. Yes--there was a certain satisfaction in these days of
privation, if only from the anticipation they created.
The sprinkling of villas had become continuous on either side of the
high road; and women going out to shop, tradesmen's boys delivering
victuals, young men in khaki, began to abound. Now and then a limping or
bandaged form would pass--some bit of human wreckage; and Mr. Bosengate
would think mechanically: 'Another of those poor devils! Wonder if we've
had his case before us!'
Running his car into the best hotel garage of the little town, he
made his way leisurely over to the court. It stood back from the
market-place, and was already lapped by a sea of persons having, as in
the outer ring at race meetings, an air of business at which one must
not be caught out, together with a soaked or flushed appearance. Mr.
Bosengate could not resist putting his handkerchief to his nose. He
had carefully drenched it with lavender water, and to this fact owed,
perhaps, his immunity from the post of foreman on the jury--for, say
what you will about the English, they have a deep instinct for affairs.
He found himself second in the front row of the jury box, and through
the odour of “Sanitas” gazed at the judge's face expressionless up
there, for all the world like a bewigged bust. His fellows in the box
had that appearance of falling between two classes characteristic of
jurymen. Mr. Bosengate was not impressed. On one side of him the foreman
sat, a prominent upholsterer, known in the town as “Gentleman Fox.” His
dark and beautifully brushed and oiled hair and moustache, his radiant
linen, gold watch and chain, the white piping to his waistcoat, and a
habit of never saying “Sir” had long marked him out from commoner
men; he undertook to bury people too, to save them trouble; and was
altogether superior. On the other side Mr. Bosengate had one of those
men, who, except when they sit on juries, are never seen without a
little brown bag, and the appearance of having been interrupted in a
drink. Pale and shiny, with large loose eyes shifting from side to
side, he had an underdone voice and uneasy flabby hands. Mr. Bosengate
disliked sitting next to him. Beyond this commercial traveller sat a
dark pale young man with spectacles; beyond him again, a short old man
with grey moustache, mutton chops, and innumerable wrinkles; and the
front row was completed by a chemist. The three immediately behind, Mr.
Bosengate did not thoroughly master; but the three at the end of the
second row he learned in their order of an oldish man in a grey suit,
given to winking; an inanimate person with the mouth of a moustachioed
codfish, over whose long bald crown three wisps of damp hair were
carefully arranged; and a dried, dapperish, clean-shorn man, whose mouth
seemed terrified lest it should be surprised without a smile. Their
first and second verdicts were recorded without the necessity for
withdrawal, and Mr. Bosengate was already sleepy when the third case was
called. The sight of khaki revived his drooping attention. But what a
weedy-looking specimen! This prisoner had a truly nerveless pitiable
dejected air. If he had ever had a military bearing it had shrunk into
him during his confinement. His ill-shaped brown tunic, whose little
brass buttons seemed trying to keep smiling, struck Mr. Bosengate as
ridiculously short, used though he was to such things. 'Absurd,' he
thought--'Lumbago! Just where they ought to be covered!' Then the
officer and gentleman stirred in him, and he added to himself: 'Still,
there must be some distinction made!' The little soldier's visage had
once perhaps been tanned, but was now the colour of dark dough; his
large brown eyes with white showing below the iris, as so often in
the eyes of very nervous people--wandered from face to face, of judge,
counsel, jury, and public. There were hollows in his cheeks, his dark
hair looked damp; around his neck he wore a bandage. The commercial
traveller on Mr. Bosengate's left turned, and whispered: “Felo de se! My
hat! what a guy!” Mr. Bosengate pretended not to hear--he could not bear
that fellow!--and slowly wrote on a bit of paper: “Owen Lewis.” Welsh!
Well, he looked it--not at all an English face. Attempted suicide--not
at all an English crime! Suicide implied surrender, a putting-up of
hands to Fate--to say nothing of the religious aspect of the matter. And
suicide in khaki seemed to Mr. Bosengate particularly abhorrent;
like turning tail in face of the enemy; almost meriting the fate of
a deserter. He looked at the prisoner, trying not to give way to this
prejudice. And the prisoner seemed to look at him, though this, perhaps,
was fancy.
The Counsel for the prosecution, a little, alert, grey, decided man,
above military age, began detailing the circumstances of the crime.
Mr. Bosengate, though not particularly sensitive to atmosphere, could
perceive a sort of current running through the Court. It was as if
jury and public were thinking rhythmically in obedience to the same
unexpressed prejudice of which he himself was conscious. Even the
Caesar-like pale face up there, presiding, seemed in its ironic serenity
responding to that current.
“Gentlemen of the jury, before I call my evidence, I direct your
attention to the bandage the accused is still wearing. He gave himself
this wound with his Army razor, adding, if I may say so, insult to
the injury he was inflicting on his country. He pleads not guilty; and
before the magistrates he said that absence from his wife was preying on
his mind”--the advocate's close lips widened--“Well, gentlemen, if
such an excuse is to weigh with us in these days, I'm sure I don't know
what's to happen to the Empire.”
'.o, by George!' thought Mr. Bosengate.
The evidence of the first witness, a room-mate who had caught the
prisoner's hand, and of the sergeant, who had at once been summoned, was
conclusive and he began to cherish a hope that they would get through
without withdrawing, and he would be home before five. But then a hitch
occurred. The regimental doctor failed to respond when his name was
called; and the judge having for the first time that day showed himself
capable of human emotion, intimated that he would adjourn until the
morrow.
Mr. Bosengate received the announcement with equanimity. He would be
home even earlier! And gathering up the sheets of paper he had scribbled
on, he put them in his pocket and got up. The would-be suicide was being
taken out of the court--a shambling drab figure with shoulders hunched.
What good were men like that in these days! What good! The prisoner
looked up. Mr. Bosengate encountered in full the gaze of those large
brown eyes, with the white showing underneath. What a suffering,
wretched, pitiful face! A man had no business to give you a look
like that! The prisoner passed on down the stairs, and vanished. Mr.
Bosengate went out and across the market place to the garage of the
hotel where he had left his car. The sun shone fiercely and he thought:
'. must do some watering in the garden.' He brought the car out, and
was about to start the engine, when someone passing said: “Good evenin'.
Seedy-lookin' beggar that last prisoner, ain't he? We don't want men of
that stamp.” It was his neighbour on the jury, the commercial traveller,
in a straw hat, with a little brown bag already in his hand and the
froth of an interrupted drink on his moustache. Answering curtly: “Good
evening!” and thinking: 'Nor of yours, my friend!' Mr. Bosengate started
the car with unnecessary clamour. But as if brought back to life by the
commercial traveller's remark, the prisoner's figure seemed to speed
along too, turning up at Mr. Bosengate his pitifully unhappy eyes. Want
of his wife!--queer excuse that for trying to put it out of his power
ever to see her again! Why! Half a loaf, even a slice, was better than
no bread. Not many of that neurotic type in the Army--thank Heaven! The
lugubrious figure vanished, and Mr. Bosengate pictured instead the form
of his own wife bending over her “Gloire de Dijon roses” in the rosery,
where she generally worked a little before tea now that they were short
of gardeners. He saw her, as often he had seen her, raise herself and
stand, head to one side, a gloved hand on her slender hip, gazing as it
were ironically from under drooped lids at buds which did not come out
fast enough. And the word 'Caline,' for he was something of a French
scholar, shot through his mind: 'Kathleen--Caline!' If he found her
there when he got in, he would steal up on the grass and--ah! but with
great care not to crease her dress or disturb her hair! 'If only she
weren't quite so self-contained,' he thought; 'It's like a cat you can't
get near, not really near!'
The car, returning faster than it had come down that morning, had
already passed the outskirt villas, and was breasting the hill to where,
among fields and the old trees, Charmleigh lay apart from commoner life.
Turning into his drive, Mr. Bosengate thought with a certain surprise:
'. wonder what she does think of! I wonder!' He put his gloves and hat
down in the outer hall and went into the lavatory, to dip his face in
cool water and wash it with sweet-smelling soap--delicious revenge on
the unclean atmosphere in which he had been stewing so many hours. He
came out again into the hall dazed by soap and the mellowed light, and
a voice from half-way up the stairs said: “Daddy! Look!” His little
daughter was standing up there with one hand on the banisters. She
scrambled on to them and came sliding down, her frock up to her eyes,
and her holland knickers to her middle. Mr. Bosengate said mildly:
“Well, that's elegant!”
“Tea's in the summer-house. Mummy's waiting. Come on!”
With her hand in his, Mr. Bosengate went on, through the drawing-room,
long and cool, with sun-blinds down, through the billiard-room, high and
cool, through the conservatory, green and sweet-smelling, out on to the
terrace and the upper lawn. He had never felt such sheer exhilarated joy
in his home surroundings, so cool, glistening and green under the July
sun; and he said:
“Well, Kit, what have you all been doing?”
“I've fed my rabbits and Harry's; and we've been in the attic; Harry got
his leg through the skylight.”
Mr. Bosengate drew in his breath with a hiss.
“It's all right, Daddy; we got it out again, it's only grazed the skin.
And we've been making swabs--I made seventeen, Mummy made thirty-three,
and then she went to the hospital. Did you put many men in prison?”
Mr. Bosengate cleared his throat. The question seemed to him untimely.
“Only two.”
“What's it like in prison, Daddy?”
Mr. Bosengate, who had no more knowledge than his little daughter,
replied in an absent voice:
“Not very nice.”
They were passing under a young oak tree, where the path wound round
to the rosery and summer-house. Something shot down and clawed Mr.
Bosengate's neck. His little daughter began to hop and suffocate with
laughter.
“Oh, Daddy! Aren't you caught! I led you on purpose!”
Looking up, Mr. Bosengate saw his small son lying along a low branch
above him--like the leopard he was declaring himself to be (for fear of
error), and thought blithely: 'What an active little chap it is!' “Let
me drop on your shoulders, Daddy--like they do on the deer.”
“Oh, yes! Do be a deer, Daddy!”
Mr. Bosengate did not see being a deer; his hair had just been brushed.
But he entered the rosery buoyantly between his offspring. His wife was
standing precisely as he had imagined her, in a pale blue frock open at
the neck, with a narrow black band round the waist, and little accordion
pleats below. She looked her coolest. Her smile, when she turned her
head, hardly seemed to take Mr. Bosengate seriously enough. He placed
his lips below one of her half-drooped eyelids. She even smelled
of roses. His children began to dance round their mother, and Mr.
Bosengate,--firmly held between them, was also compelled to do this,
until she said:
“When you've quite done, let's have tea!”
It was not the greeting he had imagined coming along in the car. Earwigs
were plentiful in the summer-house--used perhaps twice a year, but
indispensable to every country residence--and Mr. Bosengate was not
sorry for the excuse to get out again. Though all was so pleasant, he
felt oddly restless, rather suffocated; and lighting his pipe, began to
move about among the roses, blowing tobacco at the greenfly; in war-time
one was never quite idle! And suddenly he said:
“We're trying a wretched Tommy at the assizes.”
His wife looked up from a rose.
“What for?”
“Attempted suicide.”
“Why did he?”
“Can't stand the separation from his wife.”
She looked at him, gave a low laugh, and said:
“Oh dear!”
Mr. Bosengate was puzzled. Why did she laugh? He looked round, saw that
the children were gone, took his pipe from his mouth, and approached
her.
“You look very pretty,” he said. “Give me a kiss!”
His wife bent her body forward from the waist, and pushed her lips out
till they touched his moustache. Mr. Bosengate felt a sensation as if he
had arisen from breakfast, without having eaten marmalade. He mastered
it, and said:
“That jury are a rum lot.”
His wife's eyelids flickered. “I wish women sat on juries.”
“Why?”
“It would be an experience.”
Not the first time she had used that curious expression! Yet her life
was far from dull, so far as he could see; with the new interests
created by the war, and the constant calls on her time made by the
perfection of their home life, she had a useful and busy existence.
Again the random thought passed through him: 'But she never tells me
anything!' And suddenly that lugubrious khaki-clad figure started up
among the rose bushes. “We've got a lot to be thankful for!” he said
abruptly. “I must go to work!” His wife, raising one eyebrow, smiled.
“And I to weep!” Mr. Bosengate laughed--she had a pretty wit! And
stroking his comely moustache where it had been kissed, he moved
out into the sunshine. All the evening, throughout his labours, not
inconsiderable, for this jury business had put him behind time, he was
afflicted by that restless pleasure in his surroundings; would break off
in mowing the lower lawn to look at the house through the trees; would
leave his study and committee papers, to cross into the drawing-room
and sniff its dainty fragrance; paid a special good-night visit to the
children having supper in the schoolroom; pottered in and out from his
dressing room to admire his wife while she was changing for dinner;
dined with his mind perpetually on the next course; talked volubly of
the war; and in the billiard room afterwards, smoking the pipe which had
taken the place of his cigar, could not keep still, but roamed about,
now in conservatory, now in the drawing-room, where his wife and the
governess were still making swabs. It seemed to him that he could not
have enough of anything. About eleven o'clock he strolled out beautiful
night, only just dark enough--under the new arrangement with Time--and
went down to the little round fountain below the terrace. His wife was
playing the piano. Mr. Bosengate looked at the water and the flat dark
water lily leaves which floated there; looked up at the house, where
only narrow chinks of light showed, because of the Lighting Order. The
dreamy music drifted out; there was a scent of heliotrope. He moved a
few steps back, and sat in the children's swing under an old lime tree.
Jolly--blissful--in the warm, bloomy dark! Of all hours of the day, this
before going to bed was perhaps the pleasantest. He saw the light go up
in his wife's bed room, unscreened for a full minute, and thought: 'Aha!
If I did my duty as a special, I should “strafe” her for that.' She came
to the window, her figure lighted, hands up to the back of her head, so
that her bare arms gleamed. Mr. Bosengate wafted her a kiss, knowing he
could not be seen. 'Lucky chap!' he mused; 'she's a great joy!' Up went
her arm, down came the blind the house was dark again. He drew a long
breath. 'Another ten minutes,' he thought, 'then I'll go in and shut up.
By Jove! The limes are beginning to smell already!' And, the better to
take in that acme of his well-being, he tilted the swing, lifted his
feet from the ground, and swung himself toward the scented blossoms. He
wanted to whelm his senses in their perfume, and closed his eyes. But
instead of the domestic vision he expected, the face of the little Welsh
soldier, hare-eyed, shadowy, pinched and dark and pitiful, started up
with such disturbing vividness that he opened his eyes again at once.
Curse! The fellow almost haunted one! Where would he be now poor little
devil!--lying in his cell, thinking--thinking of his wife! Feeling
suddenly morbid, Mr. Bosengate arrested the swing and stood up.
Absurd!--all his well-being and mood of warm anticipation had deserted
him! 'A d---d world!' he thought. 'Such a lot of misery! Why should I
have to sit in judgment on that poor beggar, and condemn him?' He
moved up on to the terrace and walked briskly, to rid himself of this
disturbance before going in. 'That commercial traveller chap,' he
thought, 'the rest of those fellows--they see nothing!' And, abruptly
turning up the three stone steps, he entered the conservatory, locked
it, passed into the billiard room, and drank his barley water. One of
the pictures was hanging crooked; he went up to put it straight. Still
life. Grapes and apples, and--lobsters! They struck him as odd for the
first time. Why lobsters? The whole picture seemed dead and oily. He
turned off the light, and went upstairs, passed his wife's door, into
his own room, and undressed. Clothed in his pyjamas he opened the door
between the rooms. By the light coming from his own he could see her
dark head on the pillow. Was she asleep? No--not asleep, certainly. The
moment of fruition had come; the crowning of his pride and pleasure in
his home. But he continued to stand there. He had suddenly no pride,
no pleasure, no desire; nothing but a sort of dull resentment against
everything. He turned back; shut the door, and slipping between the
heavy curtains and his open window, stood looking out at the night.
'.ull of misery!' he thought. 'Full of d---d misery!'