As in the case of so many unions in which mutual attraction of a quite
superficial nature has been mistaken for love, the marriage of Jim
and Dolly was a complete disaster. Disquietude began to make itself
felt within a few weeks, but many months elapsed before Jim faced the
situation without any further attempt at self-deception. The revelation
that he had nothing to say to his wife, no thought to exchange with her,
had come to him early. At first he had tried to believe that it was due
to some sort of natural reticence in both their natures; and one day,
chancing to open a volume of the poems of Matthew Arnold which Dolly had
placed upon an occasional table in the drawing-room (for the look of the
thing) he had found some consolation in the following lines:—
Alas, is even Love too weak
To unlock the heart and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal’d
Their thoughts....
But we, my love—does a like spell benumb
Our hearts, our voices? Must we, too, be dumb?
Other lovers, then, had experienced that blank-wall feeling: it was just
human nature. But soon he began to realize that in this case the trouble
was more serious. He had nothing to say to her. She did not understand
him, nor call forth his confidences.
For months he had struggled against the consciousness that he had made
a fatal mistake; but at length the horror of his marriage, of his
inheritance, and of society in general as he saw it here in England,
became altogether too large a presence to hide itself in the dark
corners of his mind. It came out of the shadows and confronted him in
the daylight of his heart—an ugly, menacing figure, towering above him,
threatening him, arguing with him, whithersoever he went. He attributed
features to it, and visualized it so that it took definite shape. It had
a lewd eye which winked at him; it had a ponderous, fat body, straining
at the buttons of the black clothing of respectability; it had heavy,
flabby hands which stroked him as though urging him to accept its
companionship. It was his gaoler, and it wanted to be friends with him.
At length one autumn day, while he was sitting in the woods among the
falling leaves, he turned his inward eyes with ferocious energy upon the
monster, and set his mind to a full study of the situation it personified.
In the first place, Dolly held views in regard to the position and status
of wife which offended Jim’s every ideal. She was firmly convinced
that marriage was, first and foremost, designed by God for the purpose
of producing in the male creature a disinclination for romance. It
involved a mutual duty, a routine: the wife had functions to perform
with condescension, the husband had recurrent requirements to be
indulged in order that his life might pursue its way with the least
possible excitement. The whole thing was an ordained and prescriptive
business, like a soldier’s drill or a patient’s diet; nor did she seem to
realize that there was no room for real love in her conception of their
relationship, no sweet enchantment, no exaltation.
Then, again, he was very much disappointed that Dolly had no wish to
have a child of her own. She had explained to him early in their married
life how her doctor had told her there would be the greatest possible
danger for her in motherhood; but it had not taken Jim long to see that a
combination of fear, selfishness and vanity were the true causes of her
disinclination to maternity. She was always afraid of pain and in dread
of death; she always thought first of her own comfort; and she was vain
of her youthful figure.
These two facts, that she asserted herself as his wife and that she
shunned parenthood, combined to produce a condition of affairs which
offended Jim’s every instinct. In these matters men are so often more
fastidious than women, though the popular pretence is to the contrary;
and in the case of this unfortunate marriage there was an appalling
contrast between the crudity of the angel-faced little wife and the
delicacy of the hardy husband.
A further trouble was that she regarded marriage as a duality
incompatible with solitude or with any but the most temporary separation.
One would have thought that she had based her interpretation of the
conjugal state upon some memory of the Siamese Twins. When Jim was
writing verses in the study—an occupation which, by the way, she
endeavoured to discourage—she would also want to write there; when he
was entertaining a male friend she would enter the room, and refuse
to budge—not because she liked the visitor, but because she must
needs assert her standing as wife and as partner of all her husband’s
amusements; when he went into Oxford or up to London she would insist
on going too; even when he was talking to the gardener she would come
up behind him, slip her arm through his, and immediately enter the
conversation.
At first, when he used to tell her that he was going alone into Oxford
to have a drink and a chat in the public room at one of the hotels, she
would burst into tears, or take offence less liquid but more devastating.
Later she accused him of an intrigue with a barmaid, and went into
tantrums when in desperation he replied: “No such luck.” For the sake of
peace he found it necessary at last to give up all such excursions except
when they were unavoidable, and gradually his life had become that of a
prisoner.
She carried this assertion of her wifely rights to galling and
intolerable lengths. She would look over his shoulder when he was writing
letters, and would be offended if he did not let her do so, or if he
withheld the letters he received. On two or three occasions she had come
to him, smiling innocently, and had handed him some opened envelope, and
had said: “I’m so sorry, dear; I opened this by mistake. I thought it was
for me.”
He could keep nothing from her prying eyes; and yet, in contrast to this
curiosity, she showed no interest whatsoever in his life previous to his
marriage, a fact which indicated clearly enough that her concern was
solely in regard to _her_ relationship with him, and was not prompted by
any desire to enter into his personality. At first he had wanted to tell
her of his early wanderings; but she had been bored, or even shocked, by
his narrations, and had told him that his adventures did not sound very
“nice.” Thus, though now she watched his every movement, she had no idea
of his early travels, nor knew, except vaguely, what lands he had dwelt
in, nor was she aware that in those days he had passed under the name of
Easton.
Now Jim enjoyed telling a story: he was, in fact, a very interesting
and vivacious raconteur; and he felt, at first, sad disappointment
that his roaming life should be regarded as a subject too dull or too
unrespectable for narration. “It’s a funny thing,” he once said to
himself, “but that girl, Monimé, at Alexandria knows far more about me
than my own wife, and I only knew her for a few hours!”
And then her poses and affectations! He discovered early in their
married life that her offers to teach the cook her business, or to knit
him waistcoats, were entirely fraudulent. She had none of the domestic
virtues—a fact which only troubled him because she persisted in seeing
herself in the rôle of practical housewife: he had no wish for her to be
a cook or a sewing woman. She went through a phase in which she pictured
herself as a sun-bonneted poultry-farmer. She bought a number of Rhode
Island Reds and Buff Orpingtons; she caused elaborate hen-houses to be
set up; and she subscribed to various poultry fanciers’ journals. But
it was not many weeks before the pens were derelict and their occupants
gone. For some months she played the part of the Lady Bountiful to the
village, and might have been seen tripping down the lanes to visit the
aged cottagers, a basket on her arm. This occupation, however, soon began
to pall, and her apostacy was marked by a gradual abandonment of the job
to the servants. Later she had attached herself to the High Church party
in Oxford, and had added new horrors to the state of wedlock by regarding
it as a mystic sacrament....
The most recent of her phases had followed on from this. She had asked
Jim to allow her to bring to the house the orphaned children of a distant
relative of her mother’s: two little girls, aged four and five. “It will
be so sweet,” she had said, “to hear their merry laughter echoing about
this old house. It will be some compensation for my great sorrow in not
being allowed to have babies of my own.”
Jim had readily consented, for he was very fond of children; and soon
the mites had arrived, very shy and tearful at first, but presently well
content with their lot. Dolly declared that no nurse would be necessary,
as she would delight in attending to them herself, and for two weeks she
had played the little mother with diminishing enthusiasm. But the day
speedily came when help was found to be necessary, and now a good-natured
nursery-governess was installed at the manor.
Having thus regained her leisure, she bought a notebook, and labelling
it “The Tiny Tot’s Treasury,” spent several mornings in dividing the
pages into sections under elaborate headings written in a large round
hand. Jim chanced upon this book one day—it lay open upon a table—and two
section-headings caught his eye. They read:—
_Hands, games with_ _Toes, games with_
“Can you keep a secret?” “This little pig went to market.”
“Pat-a-cake.”
The book was abandoned within a week or two; but the recollection of its
futility, its pose, remained in Jim’s memory for many a day.
The presence of these two little girls, while being a considerable
pleasure to Jim in itself, had been the means of irritating him still
further in regard to his wife. Sometimes, when she remembered it, she
would go up to the nursery to bid them “good-night” and to hear their
prayers; and when he accompanied her upon this mission his spontaneous
heart was shocked to notice how her attitude towards them was dictated
solely by the picture in her own mind which represented herself as
the ideal mother. There was a long mirror in the nursery, and, as she
caressed the two children, her eyes were fixed upon her own reflection as
though the vision pleased her profoundly.
And then, only a few days ago, a significant occurrence had taken place
which had led to a painful scene between Dolly and himself. One morning
at breakfast the elder of the two little girls had told him that she had
had an “awfully awful” dream.
“It was all about babies,” she had said, and then, pausing shyly, she had
added: “But I mustn’t tell you about it, because it’s very naughty.”
He was alone in the room with them at the time, and he had questioned
the round-eyed little girl, and had eventually extracted from her the
startling information that on the previous evening Dolly had been telling
them “how babies grew,” but had warned them that it would be naughty to
talk about it.
He was furious, and when his wife came downstairs at mid-morning—she
always had her breakfast in bed—he had caught hold of her arm and had
asked her what on earth she meant by talking in this manner to two
infants of four and five years of age.
“It’s not your business,” was the reply. “You must trust a woman’s
instinct to know when to reveal things to little girls.”
“Oh, rot” he had answered, angrily; and suddenly he had put into hot and
scornful words his interpretation of Dolly’s untimely action. “The fact
is, your motive is never disinterested. You are always picturing yourself
in one rôle or another. You didn’t even think what sort of impression you
were making on the minds of those little girls: you were only play-acting
for your own edification.”
“I don’t understand you,” she had stammered, shocked and frightened.
“You pictured yourself,” he went on, with bitter sarcasm, “as the sweet
and wise mother revealing to the wide-eyed little girls the great secrets
of Nature. I suppose some Oxford ass has been lecturing to a lot of you
silly women about the duties of motherhood, and you at once built up your
foolish picture, and thought it would make a charming scene—the gentle
mother, the two little babies at your knee, their lisping questions
and your pure, sweet answer, telling them the wonderful vocation of
womanhood. And then you went upstairs and forced it on the poor little
souls, just to gratify your vanity; but afterwards you were frightened at
what you had done, and told them they mustn’t speak about it, because it
was naughty. Naughty!—Good God!—That one word has already sown the seed
of corruption in their minds. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
He had not waited for her reply, but had left the room, and had gone
with clenched fists into the woods, his usual refuge, sick at heart, and
appalled that his life was linked to such a sham thing as his wife had
proved herself to be.
He had longed to get away from her, away from Eversfield, back to his
beloved high roads once more, out of this evil stagnation; and all the
while the ponderous, black-coated creature of his imagination had leered
at him and stroked him.
When next he saw his wife he had found her in the rock-garden playing a
game with the two children, as though she were determined to make him
realize her ability to enter into their mental outlook. “We are playing a
game of fairies,” she had told him, evidently not desiring to keep up the
quarrel. “All the flowers are enchanted people, and the rockery there is
an ogre’s castle. We’re having a lovely time.”
The two little girls actually were standing staring in front of them,
utterly bored; for the ability to play with children is a delicate art
in which few “grown-ups” are at ease. But Dolly, as she crouched upon
the ground, was not concerned with anybody save herself, and the game was
designed for the applause of her inward audience and for the eye of her
husband, and not at all for the entertainment of her charges.
“Well, when you’ve finished I want you to come and help me tidy my
writing-table and tear things up,” he had said to the children; and
thereat they had asked Dolly whether they might please go now, and
had pranced into the house at his side, leaving her sighing in the
rock-garden.
Thoughts and memories such as these paraded before his mind’s eye as he
sat upon a fallen tree trunk, deep in the woods. The afternoon was warm
and still, and the leaves which fell one by one from the surrounding
trees seemed to drop from the branches deliberately, as though each were
answering an individual call of the earth. Sometimes his heavy thoughts
were interrupted by the shrill note of a bird, and once there was a
startled scurry amongst the undergrowth as a rabbit observed him and went
bounding away.
The wood was not very extensive, but, with the surrounding fields, it
afforded a certain amount of shooting; and one of Jim’s tenants, Pegett
by name, who lived in a cottage in a clearing at the far side, acted as a
sort of gamekeeper, his house being given to him free of rent in return
for his services.
The sun had set, and the haze of a windless twilight had gathered in the
distant spaces between the trees when at length Jim rose to return to the
manor. His ruminations had led him to no very definite conclusion, save
only that he had made a horrible mistake, and that he must adjust his
life to this glaring fact, even though he offend Dolly’s dignity in the
process.
As he stood for a moment in silence, stretching his arms like one awaking
from sleep, he was suddenly aware of the sound of cracking twigs and
rustling leaves, and, looking in the direction from which it came, he
caught sight of the red-faced Pegett, the gamekeeper, emerging, gun in
hand, from behind a group of tree-trunks. The man ran forward, and then,
recognizing him, paused and touched his cap.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, breathing heavily, “I’m after that there
poaching thief, Smiley-face. ’E’s at it again: I seen ’im slip in with
’is tackle. I seen ’im from my window.”
“He’s not been this way,” Jim assured him. “I’ve been sitting here a long
time.”
“’E’s a clever ’un!” Pegett muttered, “but I’ll get ’im one ’o these
days, sir, I will; and I’ll put a barrel o’ shot into ’is legs.”
“He’s not quite right in his head, is he?” Jim asked.
“Oh, ’e’s wise enough,” the man replied; “wise enough to get ’is dinner
off of your rabbits, sir. That’s been ’is game since ’e were no more’n a
lad. And never done an honest day’s work in ’is life.”
Smiley-face, as has been said, was generally considered to be
half-witted; but on the few occasions on which Jim had spoken to him he
had answered intelligently enough, not to say cheekily, though there
was something most uncanny about his continuous smile. Nobody seemed to
know exactly how he lived. He slept in a garret in a lonely cottage
belonging to an aged and witch-like woman known as old Jenny, and it was
to be presumed that he did odd jobs for her in return for his keep; but
she herself was a mysterious soul, not inclined to waste words on the
passer-by, and her cottage, which stood midway between Eversfield and the
neighbouring village of Bedley-Sutton, was superstitiously shunned by the
inhabitants of both places.
Pegett was eager to track down the malefactor, and presently he
disappeared among the trees, moving like a burlesque of a Red Indian, and
actually making sufficient noise to rouse the woods for a hundred yards
around. Jim, meanwhile, made his way towards the manor, walking quietly
upon the moss-covered path, and pausing every now and then to listen
to the distant commotion caused by the gamekeeper’s efforts to break a
silent way through the brittle twigs and crisp, dead leaves.
He had just sighted the gate which led from the wood to the lower part
of the garden of the manor when his eye was attracted by the swaying of
the upper branch of an oak a short distance from the path. He paused,
wondering what had caused the movement, which had sent a shower of
leaves to the ground, and to his surprise he presently discerned a man’s
foot resting upon it, the remainder of his body being hidden behind the
broad trunk. He guessed immediately that he had chanced upon, and treed,
Smiley-face, and, having a fellow feeling for the poacher, he called
out to him, quite good-naturedly, to come down. He received no answer,
however; and going therefore to the foot of the oak, he looked up at the
man, who was now hardly concealed, and again addressed him.
“It’s no good pretending to be a woodpecker, Smiley-face,” he said. “Come
down at once, or I’ll shy a stone at you.”
Smiley-face was a youngish man, with dirty red hair, puckered pink skin,
and a smile which extended from ear to ear. His nose was snub, and his
eyes were like two sparkling little blue beads, cunning and merry. He now
thrust this surprising countenance forward over the top of a branch, and
stared down at Jim with an expression of intense relief.
“Lordee!—it’s the Squire,” he muttered. “You did give I a fright, sir: I
thought it was Mr. Pegett with ’is gun. Shoot I dead, ’e said he would.
’E said it to my face, up yonder at the Devil’s Crossroads: would you
believe it?”
“Yes, he told me he’d let you have an ounce of small shot, but only in
the legs of course.”
“Oo!” said Smiley-face. “And me that tender, what with thorn and nettle
and the midges.”
“You’d better come down,” Jim advised. “He’s after you now; and you can
see I myself haven’t got my gun with me, or I’d pepper you too.”
The man descended the tree, talking incoherently as he swung from branch
to branch. Presently he dropped to the ground from one of the lower
boughs, and stood grinning before Jim, a dirty, ragged creature without a
point to commend him.
“Fairly cotched I am,” he declared. “But I knows a gen’l’man when I sees
un. I knows when it’s safe and when it baint. If I was to run now, d’you
reckon you could catch I, sir?”
For answer Jim’s lean arm shot out, and his hand gripped hold of the
handkerchief knotted around the man’s neck. Smiley-face swung his fist
round, but the blow missed; and Jim, who had learnt a trick or two from a
little Jap in California, tripped him up with ease, and the next moment
was kneeling upon his chest.
“What about that, Smiley-face?” he asked, laughing.
“Wonderful!” replied the poacher. “I should never ha’ thought it.”
Jim rose to his feet. “Get up,” he said, “and let me hear what you’ve got
to say for yourself.” Then, as the man did as he was bid, he added: “If
Pegett comes along, you can slip through that gate and across my garden.
Nobody will see you.”
Smiley-face grinned. “Thank’ee kindly, sir,” he said, touching his
forelock. “I knew you was a kind gen’l’man.”
“Oh, cut that out,” Jim replied sharply. “What d’you mean by going after
my rabbits?”
“O Lordee! Be they yours?” Smiley-face scratched his red head.
“You know very well they are. I own this place, don’t I?”
“And the rabbits, too?”
“Well, of course!”
“I reckon _they_ don’t know it, sir,” Smiley-face muttered, still
grinning broadly.
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Jim.
The poacher held up his forefinger as though in reproach. “I’m a poor
man, me lord,” he murmured.
“You’re a thief.”
“Oh, no,” replied Smiley-face with assurance. “Poachers isn’t thieves,
your highness.”
“Well they’re _my_ rabbits.”
“But I’m a poor man,” the other repeated.
“So you said,” Jim answered. “That’s no excuse.”
Smiley-face shook his head. “You wouldn’t be like to understand a poor
man—not with a big ’ouse, and ’undreds o’ rabbits, you wouldn’t.”
“Oh, wouldn’t I!” said Jim. “I’ve been poor myself. I’ve known what it is
not to have a cent in the world. I’ve slept in hedges; I’ve tramped the
roads....”
“_You_ ’ave?” The poacher was incredulous, and thrust his head forward,
staring at his captor with cunning little eyes.
“Yes, I have,” Jim declared.
“Lordee!” exclaimed Smiley-face. “Then you know....”
“Know what?” asked Jim.
The man made a non-committal gesture. “It’s not for me to say what you
know, your worship. But you _do_ know.”
Jim made an impatient movement. “Look here now, if I let you go this time
will you promise not to do it again?”
Smiley-face shook his head, and again touched his forelock. “Oh, I
couldn’t do that, sir. It’s tremenjus sport; and old Jenny she do cook
rabbit fine, sir; _and_ eat un, too. Don’t be angry, your highness,” he
added quickly, as Jim turned threateningly upon him.
“Don’t keep calling me ‘your highness’ and ‘my lord.’ I’m a plain man,
the same as you.”
“So you be, sir,” the other smiled. “You’ve walked the roads; you’ve lain
out o’ nights. You _know_. And now you’re a-askin’ o’ I not to poach!
Oh, you can’t do that, sir....”
“Well, supposing I give you permission to poach every now and then?” Jim
suggested.
“What?—and tell Mr. Pegett not to shoot I dead? Oh, no; there wouldn’t be
no sport in that.”
Jim held out his hand. “Look here, Smiley-face,” he said. “You seem to be
pulling my leg, but I rather like you. Let’s be friends.”
The man drew back. “Well, I don’t ’xactly ’old with friends, sir. Friends
laughs at friends.”
Nevertheless, he grasped the proffered hand.
“Nonsense,” Jim replied. “Friends are people who stand by one another
through thick and thin. Friends are people who have something in common
which they both defend. You and I have something in common, Smiley-face.”
“And what be that?” the man asked.
“Why,” laughed Jim, “we’re both up against it. We’re both failures in
life, tramps by nature. As you say, we both _know_.”
Smiley-face stared at him, not altogether understanding his words.
“You’d better come across the garden with me now,” said Jim.
The poacher shook his head. “No, sir, I reckon I’ll bide ’ere, and go
back through the woods.”
“But Pegett’s there with his gun.”
Smiley-face grinned. “’E’ll not get I, never you fear!”
Jim turned and walked towards the gate; and presently his friend the
poacher moved stealthily away into the gathering dusk, and soon was lost
amongst the trees.