INTERLUDE IN THE WOOD
Morgan, the man-servant, and his myrmidon of the boots and knives, were
busy and out of sight in the pantry near the hall, as Jan knew they
would be by this time. Yet he was flushed and flurried as he ran down
into the empty quad, and dived into the closed fly which had just pulled
up outside. He leant as far back as possible. The road broadened, the
town came to an end. The driver drove on phlegmatically, without
troubling his head as to why one of the cricketing young gentlemen
should be faring forth alone, in his flannels, too, and without any
luggage either. He would be going to meet his friends at Molton, likely,
and bring them back to see the cricket. So thought the seedy handler of
shabby ribbons, so far as he may be said to have thought at all, until a
bare head stuck out behind him at Burston Corner, and he was told to
pull up.
“Jump down a minute, will you? I want to speak to you.”
The fly stopped in one of the great dappled shadows that trembled across
the wooded road. A bucolic countenance peered over a huge horse-shoe pin
into the recesses of the vehicle.
“See here, my man; here’s nine bob for you. I’m sorry it isn’t ten, but
I’ll make it up to a pound at the end of the term.”
“I’m very much obliged to you, sir, I’m sure!”
“Wait a bit. That’s only on condition you keep your mouth shut; there
may be a bit more in it when you’ve kept it jolly well shut till then.”
“You’re not going to get me into any trouble, sir?”
“Not if I can help it and you hold your tongue. We’re only going round
by Yardley Wood instead of to Molton, and I shan’t keep you waiting
there above half an hour. It’s—it’s only a bit of a lark!”
A sinful smile grew into the crab-apple face at the fly-window.
“I been a-watching you over them palings at bottom end o’ ground all the
morning, Mr. Rutter, but I didn’t see it was you just now, not at first.
Lord, how you did bool ’em down! I’ll take an’ chance it for you, sir,
jiggered if I don’t!”
The fly rolled to the left of Burston church, now buried belfry-deep in
the fretful foliage of its noble avenue. It threaded the road in which
Chips had encountered Evan on their first Sunday walk; there was the
stile where Jan had waited in the background, against the hedge. Strange
to think of Evan’s attitude then and long afterwards, and of Jan’s
errand now; but lots of things were strange if you were fool enough to
stop to think about them. That was not Jan’s form of folly when once
committed to a definite course of action; and any such tendency was
extremely quickly quelled on this occasion. He had more than enough to
think about in the interview now before him. It was almost his first
opportunity of considering seriously what he was to say, how he had
better begin, what line exactly it would be wisest to take, and what
tone at the start. It was annoying not to be able to decide absolutely
beforehand; it was disconcerting, too, because in his first glow the
very words had come to him together with his plan. He had made short
work of the noxious Mulberry almost as soon as the creature had taken
shape in his mind. But on second thoughts it appeared possible to make
too short work of a scoundrel with tales to tell, money or no money. And
by the time the horse was walking up the last hill, with the green lane
on top, Jan had thought of the monstrous Cacus in the Aventine woods,
without feeling in the least like the superhuman hero of the legend.
There lay the celebrated covert, in its hollow in the great grass
country. In the heavy sunlight of a rainy summer, the smear of woodland,
dense and compressed, was like a forest herded in a lane. So smoky was
the tint of it, from the green heights above, that one would have said
any moment it might burst into flames, like a damp bonfire. But Jan only
thought of the monster in its depths, as he marched down through the
lush meadows, with something jingling on him at every other stride.
Yardley Wood was bounded by a dyke and a fence, and presented such a
formidable tangle of trees and undergrowth within, that Jan, though
anxious for immediate cover, steered a bold course for the made opening.
The white wicket looked positively painted on the dark edge of the wood.
It led into a broad green ride, spattered with buttercups as thick as
freckles on a country face.
Jan entered the ride, and peered into the tangled thicket on either
hand. Its sombre depths, unplumbed by a ray of sun, reminded him of a
striking description in one of the many novels that Chips had made him
read: it was twilight there already, it must be “dark as midnight at
dusk, and black as the ninth plague of Egypt at midnight.” And there was
another plague of Egypt that Jan recalled before he had penetrated a
yard into the fringe of tangle-wood. He became at once the sport and
target of a myriad flies. The creatures buzzed aggressively in the
sudden stillness of the natural catacomb; and yet above their hum the
tree-tops made Æolian music from the first moment that he stood beneath
them, while last year’s leaves, dry enough there even in that wet
summer, rustled at every jingling step he took.
And now his steps followed the wavering line of least resistance, and so
turned and twisted continually; but he would not have taken very many in
this haphazard, tentative fashion, and was beginning in fact to bend
them back towards the ride, when the bulbous nose of Mulberry appeared
under his very own.
It was making music worthy of its painful size, as he lay like a log on
the broad of his back, in a small open space. His battered hat lay
beside him, along with a stout green cudgel newly cut, Jan had half a
mind to remove this ugly weapon as a first preliminary; but it was not
the half which had learnt to give points rather than receive them, and
the impulse was no sooner felt than it was scorned. Yet the drunkard was
a man of no light build. Neither did he lie like one just then
particularly drunk, or even very sound asleep. The flies were not
allowed to batten on his bloated visage; every now and then the snoring
stopped as he shook them off; and presently a pair of bloodshot eyes
rested on Jan’s person.
“So you’ve come, have you?” grunted Mulberry; and the red eyes shut
again ostentatiously, without troubling to climb to Jan’s face.
“_I_ have,” said he, with dry emphasis. It was either too dry or else
not emphatic enough for Mulberry.
“You’re late, then, hear that? Like your cheek to be late. Now you can
wait for me.”
“Not another second!” cried Jan, all his premeditated niceties forgotten
in that molecule of time. Mulberry sat up, blinking.
“I thought it was Mr. Devereux!”
“I know you did.”
“Have you come instead of him?”
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know you! I won’t have anything to do with you,” exclaimed
Mulberry, with a drunken dignity rendered the more grotesque by his
difficulty in getting to his feet.
“Well, you certainly won’t have anything more to do with Mr. Devereux,”
retorted Jan, only to add: “So I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with
me,” in a much more conciliatory voice. He had just remembered his
second thoughts on the way.
“Why? What’s happened him?” asked Mulberry, suspiciously.
“Never you mind. He can’t come; that’s good enough. But I’ve come
instead—to settle up with you.”
“You have, have you?”
“On the spot. Once for all.”
Jan slapped one of the pockets that could not be abolished in cricket
trousers. It rang like a money-bag flung upon a counter. The reprobate
looked impressed, but still suspicious about Evan.
“He was to come here yesterday, and he never did.”
“It wasn’t his fault; that’s why I’ve come to-day.”
“I said I’d go in and report him to Mr. Thrale, if he slipped me up
twice.”
“'Blab’ was your word, Mulberry!”
“Have you seen what I wrote?”
“I happen to have got it in my pocket.”
Mulberry lurched a little nearer. Jan shook his head with a grin.
“It may come in useful, Mulberry, if you ever get drunk enough to do as
you threaten.”
“Useful, may it?”
If the red eyes fixed on Jan had been capable of flashing, they would
have done so now. They merely watered as though with blood. Till this
moment man and boy had been only less preoccupied with the flies than
with each other. Mulberry with the battered hat had vied with Jan and
his handkerchief in keeping the little brutes at bay. But at this point
the swollen sot allowed the flies to cover his hideousness like a
spotted veil. It was only for seconds, yet to Jan it was almost proof
that the scamp had something to fear, that his pressure on Evan was
rather more than extortionate. His expressionless stare had turned
suddenly expressive. That could not be the flies. Nor was it only what
Jan thought it was.
“I’ve seen you before, young feller!” exclaimed Mulberry.
“You’ve had chances enough of seeing me these four years.”
“I don’t mean at school. I don’t mean at school,” repeated Mulberry,
racking his muddled wits for whatever it might be that he did mean. Jan
was under no such necessity; already he was back at the fair, that wet
and fateful night in March—but he did not intend Mulberry to join him
there again.
“It’s no good you trying to change the subject, Mulberry! I’ve got your
letter to Mr. Devereux, and you’ll hear more about it if you go making
trouble at the school. If you want trouble, Mulberry, you shall have all
the trouble you want, and p’r’aps we’ll give the police a bit more to
make ’em happy. See? But I came to square up with you, and the sooner we
get it done the better for all the lot of us.”
Jan was at home. Something contracted ages ago, nay, something that he
had brought with him into the world, something of his father, was
breaking through the layer of the last five years. It had broken through
before. It had helped him to fight his earliest battles. But it had
never had free play in all these terms, or in the holidays between
terms. This was neither home nor school; this was a bite of life as Jan
would have had to swallow it if his old life had never altered. And all
at once it was a strapping lad from the stables, an Alcides of his own
kidney and no young gentleman, with whom the local Cacus had to reckon.
“Come on!” said he sullenly. “Let’s see the colour o’ yer coin, an’ done
with it.”
Jan gave a conquerer’s grin; yet knew in his heart that the tussle was
still to come; and if he had brought a cap with him, instead of driving
out bare-headed this was the moment at which he would have given the
peak a tug. He plunged his hand into the jingling pocket. He brought out
a fistful of silver of all sizes, and one or two half-sovereigns. In the
act he shifted his position, and happened to tread—but left his foot
firmly planted—upon that ugly cudgel just as its owner stooped to pick
it up and almost overbalanced in the attempt.
“Look out, mister! That’s my little stick. I’d forgotten it was there.”
“Had you? I hadn’t,” said Jan, one eye on his money and the other on his
man. “You don’t want it now, do you, Mulberry?”
“Not partic’ly.”
“Then attend to me. There’s your money. Not so fast!”
His fist closed. Mulberry withdrew a horrid paw.
“I thought you said it was mine, mister?”
“It will be, in good time. Have a look at it first.”
“Lot o’ little silver, ain’t it?”
“One or two bits of gold as well.”
“It may be more than it looks; better let me count it, mister.”
“It’s been counted. That’s the amount; you sign that, and it’s yours.”
With his other hand Jan had taken from another pocket an envelope,
stamped and inscribed, but not as for the post, and a stylographic pen.
The stamp was just under the middle of the envelope; above was written,
in Jan’s hand and in ink:
_Received in final payment for everything supplied in Yardley Wood to
end of June_—
£2 18_s._ 6_d._
“Sign across the stamp.” said Jan briskly. Underneath was the date.
The envelope fluttered in the drunkard’s fingers.
“Two p’un’ eighteen—look here—this won’t do!” he cried less thickly
than he had spoken yet. “What the devil d’you take me for? It’s close on
five golden sovereigns that _I’m_ owed. This is under three.”
“It’s all you’ll get, Mulberry, and it’s a darned sight more than you
deserve for swindling and blackmailing. If you don’t take this you won’t
get anything, except what you don’t reckon on!”
The man understood; but he was almost foaming at the mouth.
“I tell you it’s a dozen and a half this summer! Half a dozen bottles
and a dozen——”
“I don’t care what it is. I know what there’s been, what you’ve charged
for it, and what you’ve been paid already.” Jan thought it time for a
bit of bluff. “This is all you’ll get; but you don’t touch a penny of it
till you’ve signed the receipt.”
“Don’t I!” snarled Mulberry. Without lowering his flaming eyes, or
giving Jan time to lower his, he slapped the back of the upturned hand
and sent the money flying in all directions. Neither looked where it
fell. Mulberry was ready for a blow. Jan never moved an eye, scarcely a
muscle. And over them rose and fell such sylvan music as had been rising
and falling all the time; only now their silence brought it home.
“You’ll simply have to pick it all up again,” said Jan quietly. “But if
you don’t sign this, Mulberry, I’m going to break every bone in your
beastly body with your own infernal stick.”
He finished as quietly as he had begun; it must have been his face that
said still more, or his long and lissom body, or his cricketer’s wrists.
Whatever the medium, the message was understood, and twitching hands
held out in token of submission. Jan put the pen in one, the prepared
receipt in the other, and Mulberry turned a back bowed with defeat.
Close behind him grew a stunted old oak, forked like a catapult, with
ivy winding up the twin stems. Down sat Mulberry in the fork, and with
such careless precision that Jan might have seen it was a favourite
seat, and the whole little open space, with its rustling carpet and its
whispering roof, its acorns and its cigar ends, a tried old haunt of
others besides Mulberry. But Jan kept so close an eye on his man that
the receipt was being signed, on one corduroy knee, before he looked up
to see the broad bust of a third party enclosed in the same oak frame.
It was Mr. Haigh, and in an instant Jan saw him redder than Mulberry
himself. It was Haigh with a limp collar and a streaming face. So he had
smelt a rat, set a watch, and followed the fly on foot like the old
athlete that he was! But how much more like him all the rest. Jan not
only came tumbling back into school life, as from that other which was
to have been his, but back with a thud into the Middle Remove and all
its old miseries and animosities.
“I might have known what to expect!” he cried with futile passion. “It’s
about your form, doing the spy!”
Haigh took less notice of this insult than Jan had known him to take of
a false quantity in school. His only comment was to transfer his
attention to Mulberry, who by now had scrambled to his legs. Leaning
through the forked tree, the master held out his hand for the stamped
envelope, obtained possession of it without a word, and read it as he
came round into the open.
“This looks like your writing, Rutter?”
“It is mine.”
Jan was still more indignant than abashed.
“May I ask what it refers to?”
“You may ask what you please, Mr. Haigh.”
“Come, Rutter! I might have put worse posers, I should have thought.
Still, as it won’t be for me to deal with you for being here, instead of
wherever you’re supposed to be, I won’t press inquiries into the nature
of your dealings with this man.”
It was Mulberry’s turn to burst into the breach; he did so as though it
were the ring, dashing his battered hat to the ground with ominous
exultation.
“Do you want to know what he’s had off me?” he demanded of Haigh. “If he
won’t tell you, I will!”
Jan’s heart sank as he met a leer of vindictive triumph. “Who’s going to
believe your lies?” he was rash enough to cry out, in a horror that
increased with every moment he had for thought.
“I’m not going to listen to him,” remarked Haigh, unexpectedly. “Or to
you either!” he snapped at Jan.
“Oh, ain’t you?” crowed Mulberry. “Well, you can shut your ears, and you
needn’t believe anything but your own eyes. I’ll show you! I’ll show
you!”
He dived into a bramble bush alongside the old forked tree. It was a
literal dive. His head disappeared in the dense green tangle. He almost
lost his legs. Then a hand came out behind him, and flung something at
their feet. It was an empty champagne bottle. Another followed, then
another and another till the open space was strewn with them. Neither
Haigh nor Jan said a word; but from the bush there came a gust of
ribaldry or rancour with every bottle, and last of all the man himself,
waving one about him like an Indian club.
“A live 'un among the deaders!” he roared deliriously. “Now I can drink
your blessed healths before I go!”
Master and boy looked on like waxworks, without raising a hand to stop
him, or a finger between them to brush away a fly. Jan for his part
neither realised nor cared what was happening; it was the end of all
things, for him or Evan, if not for them both. Evan would hear of
it—and then—and then! But _would_ he hear? Would he, necessarily? Jan
glanced at Haigh, and saw something that he almost liked in him at last;
something human, after all these years; but only until Haigh saw him,
and promptly fell upon the flies.
Mulberry meanwhile had knocked the neck off the unopened bottle with a
dexterous blow from one of the empties. A fountain of foam leapt up like
a plume of smoke; the pothouse expert blew it to the winds, and drank
till the jagged bottle stood on end upon his upturned visage. His blood
ran with the overflowing wine—scarlet on purple—and for a space the
draught had the curiously clarifying effect of liquor on the chronic
inebriate. It made him sublimely sober for about a minute. The sparkle
passed from the wine into those dim red eyes. They fixed themselves on
Jan’s set face. They burst into a flame of sudden recognition.
“Now I remember! Now I remember! I told him I’d seen him——”
He stopped himself with a gleam of inspired cunning. He had nearly
defeated his immediate ends. He looked Jan deliberately up and down, did
the same by Haigh, and only then snatched up his ugly bludgeon.
“You’d better be careful with that,” snapped Haigh, with the face which
had terrorised generations of young boys. “And the sooner you clear out
altogether, let me tell you, the safer it’ll be for you!”
“No indecent haste,” replied Mulberry, leaning at ease upon his weapon.
The sparkle of the wine even reached that treacherous tongue of his,
reviving its humour and the smatterings of other days. “Festina
Whats-'er-name—meaning don’t you be in such a blooming hurry! That nice
young man o’ yours and me, we’re old partic’lars, though you mightn’t
think it; don’t you run away with the idea that he’s emptied all them
bottles by his little self! It wouldn’t be just. I’ve had my share; but
he don’t like paying his, and that’s where there’s trouble. Now we don’t
keep company no more, and I’m going to tell you where that nice young
man an’ me first took up with each other. Strictly 'tween ourselves.”
“I’ve no wish to hear,” cried Haigh. He looked as Jan had seen him look
before running some fellow out of his hall. “Are you going of your own
accord——”
“Let him finish,” said Jan, with a grim impersonal interest in the
point. In any case it was all over with him now.
“Very kind o’ nice young man—always _was_ nice young man!” said
Mulberry. “Stric’ly 'tween shelves it was in your market-place, one
blooming fair, when all good boys should ha’ been tucked up in bed an’
'sleep. Nasty night, too! But that’s where I see 'im, havin’ barney
about watch, I recollec’. That’s where we first got old partic’lars.
Arcade Sambo—birds of eather—as we used say when I was at school. I
seen better days, remember, an’ that nice young man’ll see worse, an’
serve him right for the way he’s tret his ol’ p’rtic’lar, that took such
care of him at the fair! Put that in your little pipes an’ smoke it at
the school. Farewell, a long farewell! Gobleshyer ... Gobleshyer ...”
They heard his reiterated blessings for some time after he was out of
sight. It was not only distance that rendered them less and less
distinct. The champagne was his master—but it had been a good servant
first.
“At any rate there was no truth in that, Rutter?” Haigh seemed almost to
hope that there was none.
“It’s perfectly true, sir, that about the fair.”
“Yet you had the coolness to suggest that he was lying about the wine!”
“I don’t suggest anything now.”
Jan kicked an empty bottle out of the way. The man’s second tone had cut
him as deep as in old odious days in form.
“Is that your money he’s left behind him?”
Jan’s answer was to go down on his knees and begin carefully picking up
the forgotten coins from the carpet of last year’s leaves. Haigh watched
him under arched eyebrows; and once more the flies were allowed to
settle on the master’s limp collar and wet wry face. Then he moved a
bottle or so with furtive foot, and kicked a coin or two into greater
prominence, behind Jan’s bent back.
“When you’re quite ready, Rutter!” said Haigh at length.