“It must be my laziness,” Jim muttered to himself, as he came meandering
down the lane after a long rambling walk around Ot Moor, and through the
woods on the far side. It was spring once more, and the third anniversary
of his marriage had gone by.
His remark was made in answer to his reiterated question as to why he had
not sooner broken away. He heartily disliked any kind of “scene,” and,
being a fatalist, he had preferred to “let things rip,” as he termed it,
than to make a bid for that freedom which he had so recklessly abandoned.
It was true that he had gone up to London more frequently of late; but
any longer absences from home had caused such an intolerable display
either of temper or of feminine jobbery on Dolly’s part that Jim had
found the game hardly worth the candle.
She had no great reason to be jealous of her husband, for he was not a
man who gave much thought to women. But she was violently jealous of
her position as his wife; and anything which suggested that Jim was not
dependent on her for companionship, or had any sort of existence in which
she played no part, aroused her pique and led her to assert herself
with a horrible sort of assurance. Men and women are capable of many
inelegances; but there is nothing within the masculine range so gross as
a silly woman’s view of wedlock.
Jim, as he trudged home between the budding hedges of the lane, and heard
the call of the spring reverberating through his deadened heart, wished
fervently that he had never inherited his uncle’s estate. The afternoon
was warm, and the power of the sun, considering the time of the year, was
remarkable. It beat into his eyes, and its brilliance seemed to penetrate
into his brain, compelling him to rouse himself from his shadowed
inaction, and to look about him.
He had been a total failure as a married man, and as a Squire his
success had been negligible. His only real friend was Smiley-face,
and, though they had little to say to one another, there was always an
unspoken understanding between them. Real friendship is occasioned by
a mutual sympathy which penetrates through that external skin whereon
the artificialities of civilization are stamped, and reaches the heart
within, where dwell the reason behind reason, the intelligence beyond
intellect, and the clear “Yes” which masters the brain’s insistent “No.”
Jim and the poacher understood one another; and on the part of the latter
this understanding was supplemented by gratitude, for it chanced that
Jim had saved him on one occasion from arrest and imprisonment. The
circumstances need not here be related, and indeed they would not be
pleasant to recall; for Smiley-face had thieved, and Jim had lied to save
him, and the whole affair was highly prejudicial to law and public safety.
Often, when he was bored, he would go down into the woods and utter a
low whistle, like the hoot of an owl, which had become his recognized
signal for calling Smiley-face; and together they would prowl about,
sometimes even poaching on other property beyond the lane which curved
around the manor estate. This whistle had been heard more than once by
villagers walking in the lane, and the story had gone about that the
place was haunted, a rumour which Jim encouraged, since it deterred the
ever-nervous Dolly from following him into its shadowed depths.
Besides this disreputable friendship, there was little comradeship
for him in Eversfield. A few of the villagers liked him he believed,
especially the children; but the majority of the inhabitants
misunderstood him, and there were those who regarded him with marked
hostility. The gipsies who camped on Ot Moor, however, found in him a
valuable friend; and the tramps and wandering beggars who visited these
parts never went empty from his door.
Presently, as he rounded a corner, he encountered one of those who
disliked him in the person of Mrs. Spooner, the doctor’s wife, who was
riding towards him on her bicycle. Dazzled by the sun in his eyes, he
stepped to one side—the wrong side, to give her room, but unfortunately
she turned in the same direction and only avoided a collision by applying
her brakes with vigour and alighting awkwardly in the rough grass at the
roadside.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Jim, raising his hat.
She was a fiery, sandy-haired little woman, who always reminded him of
an Irish terrier; and her weather-beaten face was wrinkled with anger as
she answered him. “_I_ was on my proper side,” she barked; “but I don’t
suppose it has ever occurred to you that there is such a thing as the
Rule of the Road.”
Jim was taken aback. “I’m awfully sorry,” he repeated. “I’m afraid I’ve
made you angry.”
“Angry!” she snapped. “It’s no good being angry with you; it makes no
impression. And, besides, a doctor’s wife has to learn to keep her
temper. And then, again, you’re my landlord, and one mustn’t quarrel with
one’s landlord.”
“Am I a bad landlord?” he asked.
“Well, you’re not exactly attentive,” she snarled, showing her teeth.
“But then you don’t seem to understand English ways. You haven’t much
idea of obligation, have you? When those little girls of yours were ill
you ignored my husband and sent for an Oxford doctor. That was hardly
polite, was it?”
“Oh, _that’s_ the trouble, is it?” said Jim. “I say, I’m awfully
sorry....”
She interrupted him with a gesture. “No, that’s only an example of the
sort of thing you do. It’s your behavior in general we all object to. You
haven’t got a friend in the place, except the village idiot.”
“You mean Smiley-face?” he queried.
“Yes,” she replied, still allowing her anger to give rein to her tongue.
“Smiley-face, the thief and poacher. _He_ loves you dearly: he nearly
knifed Ted Barnes the other day for saying what he thought of you. I
congratulate you on your champion!”
“Now, what have I done to Ted Barnes?” Jim asked. Ted was the postman.
“That wretched little Dachs of yours bit him,” she replied, “and you
didn’t so much as inquire.”
“It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” said Jim. “And, anyway, it’s my wife’s
dog, not mine.”
“Oh, blame it on to your wife,” she sniffed. “It seems to me that the
poor dear soul has to take the blame for everything. It’s very unfair on
her.”
This was staggering, and Jim stared at her with mingled anger and
astonishment in his dark eyes. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, we can all guess what she suffers,” she said. “Only last week she
nearly cried in my house.... Oh, you needn’t think she gave away any
secrets, the poor little angel. She said herself ‘a wife must make no
complaints.’ She’s the soul of loyalty. But we’re not blind, Mr. West.”
Jim scratched his head. “And all this because I nearly collided with your
bicycle!” he mused.
Mrs. Spooner pulled herself together. “It’s the last straw that breaks
the camel’s back,” she growled. “But I suppose I’m putting my foot into
it as usual. I’ll say no more.” And therewith she mounted her bicycle and
rode off with her nose in the air. Had she possessed a tail it would have
appeared as an excited stump, sticking out from behind the saddle, and
vibrating with the thrill of battle.
Jim walked homewards feeling as though he had been bitten in several
places. “What _is_ wrong with me?” he muttered aloud. He was, of
course, aware that he had not been sociable; for the rank and fashion
of Eversfield and its neighbourhood combined the dreary conservatism of
English country life with the intellectual affectations of Oxford; and
Oxford, as the Master of Balliol once said, represented “the despotism of
the superannuated, tempered by the epigrams of the very young.” But he
had always thought that he had something in common with Ted Barnes and
his friends; for he had overlooked the fact that village opinion is still
dictated in England by the “gentry.”
The realization was presently borne in on him that Dolly, failing to
play with any success the part of the indispensable wife and helpmate,
had assumed the rôle of martyr, and had confided her fictitious sorrows
to her neighbours. It was a bitter thought; and he slashed at the hedges
with his stick as it took hold of his mind.
He determined to tax her with this new delinquency at once; but when
he reached the manor he found her sitting in the drawing-room with Mr.
Merrivall, the tenant of Rose Cottage, who was lying back in an armchair,
smoking a fat cigar which Dolly had evidently fetched for him from the
cabinet in the study.
George Merrivall was a mysterious bachelor of middle age, whom Jim could
not fathom. He had a heavy, grey face; a weak mouth; round, fish-like
eyes, which looked anywhere but at the person before him; and thin brown
hair, smoothed carefully across a central area of baldness. He had lived
at Rose Cottage for the last ten years or more, and was in receipt of a
monthly cheque, which might be interpreted as coming from some person or
persons who desired his continued rustication.
There was nothing against him, however, save that after the receipt of
each of the cheques he was said to shut himself up in his cottage for
a few days, and the belief was general that at such times he was dead
drunk. This, however, might be merely gossip; and his housekeeper, Jane
Potts, was a woman of such extremely secretive habits that the truth was
not likely to be known. Some people thought that she was, or had been,
his mistress; but if this were true this secret, likewise, was well
kept. He appeared to be a man of studious habits, a judge of pictures, a
collector of rare books, and a regular church-goer.
Dolly had made his acquaintance before she had met Jim, and, since their
marriage, he had been one of the few frequent visitors at the manor. Jim,
however, did not like him or trust him, thinking him, indeed, somewhat
uncanny; and he now greeted him with no enthusiasm.
“Hullo, Squire,” drawled the visitor, without rising from his chair.
“Been out tramping as usual? You look as though you’d been sleeping under
a hedge!”
“James, dear,” said Dolly, “you really do look very untidy. And you’re
all covered over with bits of twigs and things.”
“Yes,” said Jim, wishing to shock. “I’ve been having a roll in the grass.”
Merrivall laughed. “Who with, you young rascal?” he said, pointing at him
with the wet, chewed end of his cigar.
Dolly drew in her breath quickly, and stared with round eyes at her
friend, and then with a suspicious frown at her husband. “Where have you
been?” she asked deliberately.
“Oh, nowhere in particular,” he answered. “Have a drink, Merrivall?”
“Thanks,” the other replied. “Whisky and water for me.”
Jim rang the bell; and presently, excusing himself by saying that he must
change his clothes, left the room.
Now, anyone who had seen him, five minutes later, as he walked across
the garden, would have thought him entirely mad; for he was carrying his
guitar across his shoulder, drum uppermost, and his stealthy step might
have suggested that he was about to use it as a weapon with which to bash
in the head of some lurking enemy.
Actually, however, he was in the habit of strumming upon this instrument
when his nerves were on edge; and, indeed, there was a melancholy charm
in his playing, and a still greater in his singing. But to-day his desire
thus to relieve his feelings was accompanied by an anxiety not to be
overheard by his wife or Merrivall. Moreover, the twilight outside was as
warm and mellow as a summer evening, whereas the interior of the manor
was grey and dismal. He had therefore indulged an impulse, and was now
slinking off, like a sick dog, to his beloved woods to bay to the rising
moon.
Passing through the gates at the end of the lower garden, where the
hedges of gorse in full flower formed a golden mass, he entered the
silent shadow of the trees; and for some distance he pushed forward
between the close-growing trunks until he had reached a favourite resort
of his, where there was a fallen oak spanning a little stream. Here,
through a cleft in the trees, he could see the moon, nearly at its full,
rising out of the violet haze of the evening; and as he sat down, with
his legs dangling above the murmuring water, he listened in silence to
the last notes of a thrush’s nesting-song that presently died away into
the hush of contented rest.
Around him the silent oaks were arrayed, their boughs extending outwards
and upwards from the gnarled trunks in fantastic shapes, like huge claws
and fingers and probosces, feeling for the departed sunlight. Little
leaves were just beginning to appear upon the branches, and here and
there beneath them, where the ground was free of undergrowth, bluebells
and violets appeared amongst the dead bracken and foliage of last year,
and the small white wood-anemones like stars were scattered in profusion.
The primroses were nearly over, but bracken shoots, curled like young
ferns, were pushing up through the brown remnants of a former generation;
low-growing creepers and brambles were sprouting into greenness; and the
moss and grasses were tender with new life.
Jim’s mood was melancholy, but not sorrowful. It seemed to him that his
heart was dead, crushed flat by the flabby hand of that leering figure
which personified domestic life, and responded not to the spring. He was
so appallingly lonely that if there had been tears within him they now
would have overflowed; but there were not. He had no self-pity, no desire
to confide his misery to another, no power, it seemed, either to laugh at
himself or to weep.
For three long years he had carried his distress about with him all day
long, had gone for lonely walks with it, had sat at home with it, had
slept with it, had wakened with it. At first he had obtained relief from
within: he had fallen back on his own mind’s great reserves of inward
entertainment. But now he was no longer self-sufficient, self-supporting.
He was utterly barren: without emotion, without love, without the power
to write his beloved verses, without a heart, without even despair. He
had always been capable of feeling sorrow for, and sympathy with, the
griefs of others: he wished now to God that he could lament over his own;
but even lamentation was denied him.
Presently, taking up his guitar, he began to sing the first song that
came to his head. It was an old Italian refrain to which he had set his
own words; and so softly did the strings vibrate under his practised
fingers, so sorrowful was his rich voice, that a listener might have
imagined him to be a lovelorn minstrel of Florence in the forests of
Fiesole. Yet there was no love in his heart.
He sang next a melancholy negro dirge, and, after a long silence,
followed on with his own setting of those lines from Shelley’s _Ode to
the West Wind_, which tell of one who, looking down into the blue waters
of the bay of Baiæ, saw
... Old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.
As he sang there rose before his inward eye a vision of the sun-bathed
lands through which he had wandered so happily in the past. He saw again
the white houses reflected in the still waters of Mediterranean, the
olive-groves passing up the hillsides, the hot roads leading through the
red-roofed villages, and the dark-skinned peasants driving their goats
along the mountain tracks. He saw the lights of the city of Alexandria
twinkling across the bay, and heard the surge of the breakers beating
on the rocks. And then, quietly and vaguely, out of the picture there
came the serene, mysterious face of a woman, a face he had thought
forgotten. Her black hair drifted back into his recollection, her grey
eyes seemed to gaze into his, and in his inward ear the one word “Monimé”
reverberated like an echo of a dream. And suddenly a door seemed to
open within him, and with an overwhelming onset, his captive emotions,
his feelings, his long-forgotten joys and sorrows, broke out from their
prison and surged through him.
He laid his guitar aside, and for a while sat wrapt in a kind of ecstasy.
It was as though he had risen from the grave: it was as though his heart
had come back to life within him.
He scrambled to his feet and stood for a moment, staring up at the moon,
his fists clenched and drumming upon his breast. Then, to his amazement,
he felt his eyes filled with tears—tears which he had not shed since he
was a small boy. He uttered a laugh of embarrassment, but it broke in his
throat, and all the cynic in him collapsed.
Throwing himself upon the ground, he spread his arms out before him and
buried his face in the young violets. He did not care now how foolish nor
how unmanly his emotion might seem to be. Here, in the woods, he was
alone, and only the understanding earth should receive his tears.
For some time he lay thus upon his face; but at length the paroxysms
passed. He raised his head, and as he did so he became aware,
intuitively, that he was being watched.
“Who’s there?” he exclaimed, staring into the surrounding undergrowth.
There was a crackling of twigs, and a moment later Smiley-face emerged
into the moonlight, and stood before him, touching his forelock.
Jim clambered to his feet. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked,
angrily. He was ashamed that he had been observed, and the colour mounted
threateningly into his face.
The poacher grinned. “Beg pardon, sir,” he said. “I heerd you singin’,
and I came to listen. And then I saw you was in trouble, and....” He took
a crouched step forward, his face puckered up, and his hands twitching.
“Oh, sir, my dear, what be the matter? Tell I, sir, tell I!” His voice
was passionately insistent. “Tell I! Don’t keep it from your friend.
Friends stick to one another through thick and thin—you said it yourself,
sir: them’s your werry words, what you said when we shook ’ands. I’d
do anything in the world for you, sir, I would, so ’elp me God! I’m a
poacher, and maybe I’m a thief, too, like you said; but s’elp me, I
can’t see you a’weeping there with your face in the ground—I can’t see
that, and not say nothin’. Tell I, my dear!-tell your friend. If it’s
that you’ve lost all your money, I’ll work for you, sir. I don’t want no
wages. If it’s your enemies, say the word and I’ll kill ’em, I will. I’d
swing for you, and gladly, too.”
Jim stared at him in amazement. The words poured from the man’s lips
in such a torrent that there could be no question of their boiling
sincerity. “Why, Smiley-face,” he said at length, “what makes you feel
like that about me? I don’t deserve it.”
Smiley-face laughed aloud. “When I makes a friend,” he replied, “I makes
a friend. You done things for I what I can’t tell you of. You’re the
first man as ever treated I fair; and now you’re breaking your ’eart, and
you’re letting it break and not tellin’ nobody. Tell I, sir, tell I, my
dear, I’m askin’ you, please.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” smiled Jim, putting his hand on his friend’s
tattered shoulder. “It’s only that people like you and me are failures in
life. We don’t seem to fit in with English ways. I suppose I got thinking
too much about other lands, about the old roads, and the sea, and the
desert, and all that sort of thing. But you wouldn’t understand: you’ve
never been far away from Eversfield, have you?”
He sat down and motioned Smiley-face to do likewise.
“Tell I about them places, sir,” said the poacher, “like what you sings
about.” Instinctively, and without reasoning, he knew that a long
talk was the best remedy for his friend; and gradually, by careful
questioning, he launched him forth upon distant seas, and led him to
speak of countries far away from the catalepsy of his present existence.
Jim spoke of the winding roads which lead up to the hills of Ceylon,
where the ground is covered with little crimson blossoms of the
Laritana, and where the peacocks, sitting in rows by the wayside, utter
their wild cries as the bullock-bandies go lurching by, and the monkeys
swing from tree to tree, chattering at the travellers. He spoke of the
Aroe Islands, where, once a year, the pearl merchants are gathered; and
he pictured in words the scene at night on the still waters when every
kind of craft is afloat, and every kind of lantern sways under the stars
in the warm breath of the wind.
Thence his memory leapt over the seas to the southern coasts of Italy,
where, upon a hot summer’s night, the little harbour of Brindisi was gay
with lanterns in like manner, and the sound of mandolins floated across
the water; while the narrow streets were thronged with townspeople taking
the air after the heat of the day. Later, he wandered to the slopes of
Lebanon, where clear rivulets rush down from the hills, through thickets
of oleander, and tumble at last into the blue Mediterranean. He spoke of
mulberry orchards, and open tracts covered with a bewildering maze of
flowers and flowering bushes: poppies, broom, speedwell, lupin, and many
another, so that the hillsides, overhanging the sea, are dazzling to the
eyes.
And so he came to Egypt and the desert, and told of the jackal-tracks
which lead back from the Nile into the barren, mysterious hills, where
a man may lose himself and die of thirst within a mile or two of hidden
wells; where the mirage rises like a lake from the parched sand, and
lures the thirsty traveller to his doom; and where the vultures circle
in the blue heavens, waiting for the men and the camels who fall and lie
still.
For a long time he sat talking thus, while the moon rose above the trees;
but at length the chill of the air reminded him that he ought to be
returning to the manor, and, picking up his guitar, he rose to his feet.
Smiley-face, however, did not move. He was staring in front of him, his
two hands thrust into the grass.
“Come along,” said Jim. “I must go back to the house now.”
The poacher looked up at him with a curious expression upon his face.
“Reckon you baint agoin’ to tell I what your trouble is, sir,” he smiled.
Jim shook his head. “No,” he answered. “I can’t talk about it, somehow.
But I’ll tell you this, Smiley-face: if I ever do talk to anybody about
it all it’ll be to you.”
When he reached the manor, Jim found that he was late for dinner; and at
the foot of the stairs he was confronted by Dolly, who was much annoyed
at seeing him still in his day clothes.
“Oh, James!” she exclaimed, angrily. “Where _have_ you been? Dinner has
already been kept back a quarter of an hour for you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m quite impossible. Don’t wait for
me: I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“Don’t hurry,” she replied, icily. “Mr. Merrivall is going to dine with
us. I shan’t be lonely.”