BOB WILD LEAVES HOME
At the turn o’ the year, Bob Wild made fewer confessions to the girl
he had made into his adviser and the sharer of his great romance.
Something in Susan herself may have accounted for this; or it may have
been the odd hallucination that sometimes seized him, when raving to
her of Polly--the hallucination that he had seen eyes like Susan’s
a thousand years ago, somewhere in a time he could not remember. It
bothered him more and more. Moreover, when talking of Polly, he often
stood near enough to Susan to see himself mirrored in her grey, quiet
eyes. Sometimes he went to have a chat with Jabez--and if Uncle Nat
was over, took a hand at Ludo. After his moor walks, too, if he saw a
light, he sometimes called in.
But the full reason of the hallucination only dawned on him one Sunday,
when he accepted Mrs. Thorpe’s invitation to tea.
“The sheep,” said Bob, suddenly, in triumph, and stared at Susan, his
hand suspended over the plate of currant cakes.
His memory had given up the mystery, at length.
Susan was the little girl who used to mind sheep with him--the little
girl whose very name he had forgotten. He saw the moor, the stone
wall, the solemn covenant of the finger across the throat, and
Susan--praying for the soul of the sheep.
Moreover, as Susan’s eye met his, he saw that she _had never
forgotten_. And he wondered if she recalled the kiss. He remembered
the touch of her rain-wet mouth yet. That little girl--was--his mother
confessor.
He was fond of Polly.
He was very fond of Polly.
But--Polly was irresponsive all at once.
Bob’s affections weren’t the kind to stand too much of an
ice-refrigerator.
But that night, when Polly sang, and he saw her from the Thorpes’ pew,
her mouth a rosy O--flooding the place with melody, the old spell
was on him, with this difference, it irritated him, and caused some
conflict with that innocent memory of the sheep-incident. When the
choir sang “All we like Sheep,” his mind was again back with Susan,
little Susan, whose Dad had been poor then, on the moors. Sometimes,
lately, he had wondered what kind of a child Susan had been. As she
had listened to his confessions about his feelings for Polly, she had
looked so pale, quiet, and crystallised. _That_ had been Susan, that
child-mate of his childhood, to whom he had once given a sand-piper’s
egg. As he knelt by Susan in the pew, he could smell the violets at her
breast.
He went straight home after chapel.
Adam, however, had got in before him.
Adam was busy book-keeping when he hung up his hat.
The accurate man, his face set in the look that said he would go down
fighting to the last to save the farm, was trying to find a sixpence
that eluded him in the accounts. His grandfather appeared to watch him
from the dark-framed picture on the wall. A square-jowled, deep-lipped
old fellow in swallow-tails, knee-breeches and buckled shoon.
Sarah, who had neuralgia, was bathing her face with camomile. Old Wild
was in bed. Sarah retired after setting Bob and Adam their supper, at
the other end of the long table.
When she had gone, Bob remarked. “Where’s that glove, Addy?”
The repressed anger that had seethed in him since he missed the glove
that morning was stamped on his face. Perhaps the knowledge that Polly
was scarcely likely to make him a contented man, made him more angry.
It was the moment when he was trying to convince himself his passion
for Polly was deathless. There is no more intense moment.
Adam Wild looked up.
“What glove?” he asked, casually.
The silence that followed was sinister.
Adam went on trying to find the sixpence.
The hunt had occupied him the night before, and the half-year’s rent
was due.
“_Her_ glove,” said Bob, at white heat. “Where is it?”
Adam went on trying to find the sixpence.
“Give it up to me, Adam,” said Bob, thickly. “Tha’d best.”
Adam looked up.
His brows were knitted.
“What art talkin’ about, Bob?” He asked dispassionately.
“Give me her glove. Tha’rt jealous on me, Adam,” said Bob.
Adam stared for a moment, then broke into laughter.
“She’s my sweetheart,” said Bob.
“She’s everybody’s,” retorted Adam.
He went on hunting the sixpence.
“What! Doesn’t ta want her?” queried Bob.
Adam laughed lightly.
“But----” began the younger brother.
It was difficult to accuse Adam of having laid siege to Polly’s heart.
Yet gradually, for a year, and latterly, almost openly--Adam had paid
attention to Polly.
“Get out o’ my light,” said Adam, impatiently. “I’m reckonin’ up.”
Then Bob Wild struck out.
Adam fell like an ox.
When Sarah and her father came down, Adam was just picking himself up.
His best coat was covered with yellow sand, from the floor. His eye was
bleeding. And--the Wild demon was awakened in him.
He rubbed his hand across his eye.
“Lads!” said old Wild, appearing. “Lads! Eh--this would ha’ put your
mother in her grave if she hadn’t been there.”
Bob Wild’s passion was gone.
The sight of the blood on his brother’s face had shocked him into
sanity.
“Whatever is it o’er?” asked Sarah, trembling.
Adam approached Bob.
Bob suddenly collapsed--mentally, before that look.
“Hit me, Addy,” he pleaded, humbly. “Hit me. I deserve it.”
Sarah pushed herself between, looking up at Adam’s face.
“I’m not goin’ to hit him,” said Adam, quietly. “But one of us two goes
out of here to-night.”
“I’m sorry, Addy,” said Bob.
The slow apology from a Wild might have moved some.
“He’s struck his own blood-brother,” said Adam, bitterly, “o’er a
wench!”
The tribal code was logical from the man trying to keep a farm, because
his ancestors tilled it.
“Lads!” said the old man, quaveringly. “Lads!”
But the fiat was gone.
It was Bob who went down the hillside, Sarah’s tears warm on his cheek,
his father’s eyes following him. At the foot of the hill, before
crossing the wishing-bridge, he turned and looked back at the farm.
He understood a little of what Adam had felt for it now, as he was
leaving it. Homeless! And the sight of his brother’s blood hung
guiltily before him, through the darkness of the night. He had struck
Adam who had fought for him at school--over a wench. He had struck
Adam, with whom he had slept in his childhood, fighting on the bed till
their mother came and thrashed them both, and left them in the dark.
Never had they dreamed of this--then. He wandered aimlessly to and fro
about the village for an hour and a half. People were then going to
bed. There were shadows on the blinds.
There were people who would have taken him in, but he could not ask
them--to-night, meet the questioning glances. Shame was on him. It was
only chance that he had not killed his brother--or, blinded him. No two
passions so conflicting could live in one breast. In that hour, when
Bob Wild struck over the Clouds, black under the ghostly veil of mist
lowering down from Fouldsworth, his passion for the singing-witch went
under. Never in his life had Bob Wild been so like his elder brother,
as an hour after he had struck him, a guilt which he felt he could
never forgive himself if Adam did. Whilst Adam--Adam in the proud
misery of his heart threw the blame on this light girl, and if he had
wavered in the punishment he was bringing on her, the revenge for the
lads who had danced to her pipe, he hardened again--now.