None Other Gods Part 9

And about him was the great soft, sweet-smelling darkness, roofed in by the far-off sky alight with stars; and beneath him in the valley he could catch the glimmer of the big lake and the blotted ma.s.ses of pine and cypress black against it.

It was here, then, under these circ.u.mstances, that d.i.c.k confessed to himself, frankly and openly for the first time, that he was in love with Jenny Launton.

He had known her for years, off and on, and had thought of her as a pretty girl and a pleasant companion. He had skated with her, ridden with her, danced with her, and had only understood, with a sense of mild shock, at the time of her engagement to Frank six months before, that she was of an age to become a wife to someone.

That had been the beginning of a process which culminated to-night, as he now understood perfectly. Its next step had been a vague wonder why Archie hadn't fallen in love with her himself; and he had explained it by saying that Archie had too great a sense of his own importance to permit himself to marry a rector's daughter with only a couple of hundred a year of her own. (And in this explanation I think he was quite correct.) Then he had begun to think of her himself a good deal--dramatically, rather than realistically--wondering what it would feel like to be engaged to her. If a younger son could marry her, surely a first cousin could--even of the Guiseleys. So it had gone on, little by little. He had danced with her here at Christmas--just after the engagement--and had stayed on a week longer than he had intended. He had come up again at Easter, and again at Whitsuntide, though he always protested to his friends that there was nothing to do at Merefield in the summer. And now here he was again, and the thing had happened.

At first, as he sat here, he tried to a.n.a.lyze his att.i.tude to Frank.

He had never approved of Frank altogether; he didn't quite like the queer kinds of things that Frank did; for Frank's reputation at Merefield was very much what it was at Cambridge. He did ridiculous and undignified things. As a small boy, he had fought at least three pitched battles in the village, and that was not a proper thing for a Guiseley to do. He liked to go out with the keepers after poachers, and d.i.c.k, very properly, asked himself what keepers were for except to do that kind of thing for you? There had been a bad row here, too, scarcely eighteen months ago; it had been something to do with a horse that was ill-treated, and Frank had cut a very absurd and ridiculous figure, getting hot and angry, and finally thras.h.i.+ng a groom, or somebody, with his own hands, and there had been uncomfortable talk about police-courts and actions for a.s.sault. Finally, he had fallen in love with, proposed to, and become engaged to, Jenny Launton. That was an improper thing for a younger son to do, anyhow, at his age, and d.i.c.k now perceived that the fact that Jenny was Jenny aggravated the offense a hundredfold. And, last of all, he had become a Catholic--an act of enthusiasm which seemed to d.i.c.k really vulgar.

Altogether, then, Frank was not a satisfactory person, and it would do him no harm to have a little real discipline at last....

It was the striking of midnight from the stable clock that woke d.i.c.k up from his deep reverie, and was the occasion of his perceiving that he had come to no conclusion about anything, except that Frank was an a.s.s, that Jenny was--well--Jenny, and that he, d.i.c.k, was an ill-used person.

I do not like to set down here, even if I could, all the considerations that had pa.s.sed through d.i.c.k's mind since a quarter-past eleven, simply because the very statement of them would give a false impression. d.i.c.k was not a knave, and he did not deceive himself about himself more than most of us do. Yet he had considered a number of points that, strictly speaking, he ought not to have considered. He had wondered whether Frank would die; he had wondered whether, if he did not, Lord Talgarth would really be as good as his word; and, if so, what effect that would have on Jenny. Finally, he had wondered, with a good deal of intellectual application, what exactly Jenny had meant when she had announced all that about the telegram she was going to send in Lord Talgarth's name, and the letter she was going to send in her own. (He had asked Archie just now in the smoking-room, and he, too, had confessed himself beaten.

Only, he had been quite sure that jenny would get her way and obtain Frank's forgiveness.)

Also, in the course of his three-quarters of an hour he had considered, for perhaps the hundredth time since he had come to the age of discretion, what exactly three lives between a man and a t.i.tle stood for. Lord Talgarth was old and gouty; Archie was not married, and showed no signs of it; and Frank--well, Frank was always adventurous and always in trouble.

Well, I have set down the points, after all. But it must not be thought that the gentleman with the pointed brown beard and thoughtful eyes, who at five minutes past twelve went up the two steps into the smoking-room, locked the doors, as he had been directed, took up his candle and went to bed, went with an uneasy conscience, or, in fact, was a villain in any way whatever.

CHAPTER III

(I)

The first spot in Frank's pilgrimage which I have been able to visit and identify in such a way that I am able to form to myself a picture of his adventure more or less complete in all its parts, lies about ten miles north-west of Doncaster, in a little valley, where curiously enough another pilgrim named Richard lived for a little while nearly six hundred years ago.

Up to the time of Frank's coming there, in the season of hay-making, numberless little incidents of his experience stand out, vivid, indeed, but fragmentary, yet they do not form to my mind a coherent whole. I think I understand to some extent the process by which he became accustomed to ordinary physical hard living, into which the initiation began with his series of almost wholly sleepless nights and heavy sleep-burdened days. Night was too strange--in barns, beneath hay-ricks, in little oppressive rooms, in stable-lofts--for him to sleep easily at first; and between his tramps, or in the dinner-hour, when he managed to get work, he would drop off in the hot suns.h.i.+ne down into depths of that kind of rest that is like the sea itself--glimmering gulfs, lit by glimpses of consciousness of the gra.s.s beneath his cheek, the bubble of bird-song in the copses, stretching down into profound and utter darkness.

Of how the little happenings of every day wore themselves into a coherent whole, and modified, not indeed himself, but his manner of life and his experience and knowledge, I can make no real picture at all. The first of these took place within ten miles of Cambridge on his first morning, and resulted in the bruised face which Mr. Harris noticed; it concerned a piece of brutality to a dog in which Frank interfered....

(He was extraordinarily tender to animals.) Then there was the learning as to how work was obtained, and, even more considerable, the doing of the work. The amateur, as Frank pointed out later, began too vigorously and became exhausted; the professional set out with the same deliberation with which he ended. One must not run at one's spade, or hoe, or whatever it was; one must exercise a wearisome self-control ...

survey the work to be done, turn slowly, spit on one's hands, and after a pause begin, remembering that the same activity must show itself, if the work was to be renewed next day, up to the moment of leaving off.

Then there was the need of becoming accustomed to an entirely different kind of food, eaten in an entirely different way, and under entirely different circ.u.mstances. There was experience to be gained as to was.h.i.+ng clothes--I can almost see Frank now by a certain kind of stream, stripped to the waist, waiting while his s.h.i.+rt dried, smoking an ill-rolled cigarette, yet alert for the gamekeeper. Above all, there was an immense volume of learning--or, rather, a training of instinct--to be gained respecting human nature: a knowledge of the kind of man who would give work, the kind of man who meant what he said, and the kind of man who did not; the kind of woman who would threaten the police if milk or bread were asked for--Frank learned to beg very quickly--the kind of woman who would add twopence and tell him to be off, and the kind of woman who, after a pause and a slow scrutiny, would deliberately refuse to supply a gla.s.s of water. Then there was the atmosphere of the little towns to be learned--the intolerable weariness of pavements, and the patient persistence of policemen who would not allow you to sit down. He discovered, also, during his wanderings, the universal fact that policemen are usually good-hearted, but with absolutely no sense of humor whatever; he learned this through various attempts to feign that the policeman was in fancy-dress costume and had no real authority. He learned, too, that all crimes pale before "resisting the police in the execution of their duty"; then, he had to learn, to, the way in which other tramps must be approached--the silences necessary, the sort of questions which were useless, the jokes that must be laughed at and the jokes that must be resented.

All this is beyond me altogether; it was beyond even Frank's own powers of description. A boy, coming home for the holidays for the first time, cannot make clear to his mother, or even to himself, what it is that has so utterly changed his point of view, and his relations towards familiar things.

So with Frank.

He could draw countless little vignettes of his experiences and emotions--the particular sensation elicited, for example, by seeing through iron gates happy people on a lawn at tea--the white china, the silver, the dresses, the flannels, the lawn-tennis net--as he went past, with string tied below his knees to keep off the drag of the trousers, and a sore heel; the emotion of being pa.s.sed by a boy and a girl on horseback; the flood of indescribable a.s.sociations roused by walking for half a day past the split-oak paling of a great park, with lodge-gates here and there, the cooing of wood-pigeons, and the big house, among its lawns and cedars and geranium-beds, seen now and then, far off in the midst. But what he could not describe, or understand, was the inner alchemy by which this new relation to things modified his own soul, and gave him a point of view utterly new and bewildering. Curiously enough, however (as it seems to me), he never seriously considered the possibility of abandoning this way of life, and capitulating to his father. A number of things, I suppose--inconceivable to myself--contributed to his purpose; his gipsy blood, his extraordinary pa.s.sion for romance, the attraction of a thing simply because it was daring and unusual, and finally, a very exceptionally strong will that, for myself, I should call obstinacy.

The silence--as regards his old world--was absolute and unbroken. He knew perfectly well that by now letters and telegrams must be waiting for him at Jack's home, including at least one from Jenny, and probably a dozen; but as to Jenny, he knew she would understand, and as to the rest, he honestly did not care at all. He sent her a picture postcard once or twice--from Ely, Peterborough, Sleaford and Newark--towns where he stayed for a Sunday (I have seen in Sleaford the little room where he treated himself to a bed for two nights)--and was content. He made no particular plans for the future; he supposed something would turn up; and he settled with himself, by the help of that same will which I have mentioned before, that he would precipitate no conclusions till he reached Barham later on in the early autumn.

His faith and morals during these weeks are a little difficult to describe. As regards his morals, at least in one particular point, he had formulated the doctrine that, when he was very hungry, game might not be touched, but that rabbits and birds were permissible if they could be snared in the hedges of the high-road. He became an expert at this kind of thing, and Jack has described to me, as taught by Frank, a few devices of which I was entirely ignorant. Frank tramped for a couple of days with a gamekeeper out of work, and learned these things from him, as well as one or two simple methods of out-of-door cookery. As regards his religion, I think I had better not say much just now; very curious influences were at work upon him: I can only say that Frank himself has described more than once, when he could be induced to talk, the extraordinary, and indeed indescribable, thrill with which he saw, now and again, in town or country, a priest in his vestments go to the altar--for he heard ma.s.s when he could....

So much, then, is all that I can say of the small, detached experiences that he pa.s.sed through, up to the point when he came out one evening at sunset from one of the fields of Hampole where he had made hay all day, when his job was finished, and where he met, for the first time, the Major and Gertie Trustcott.

(II)

They were standing with the sunset light behind them, as a glory--two disreputable figures, such as one sees in countless thousands along all the high-roads of England in the summer. The Major himself was a lean man, with a red mustache turning gray, deep-set, narrow, blood-shot eyes, a chin and very square jaw shaved about two days previously. He had an old cricketing cap on his head, trousers tied up with string, like Frank's, and one of those long, square-tailed, yellowish coats with broad side-pockets such as a gamekeeper might have worn twenty years ago. One of his boots was badly burst, and he, seemed to rest his weight by preference on the other foot. He was not prepossessing; but Frank saw, with his newly-gained experience, that he was different from other tramps. He glanced at the girl and saw that she too was not quite of the regular type, though less peculiar than her companion; and he noticed with an odd touch at his heart that she had certain characteristics in common with Jenny. She was not so tall, but she had the same colored hair under a filthy white sun-bonnet and the same kind of blue eyes: but her oval face again was weak and rather miserable. They were both deeply sunburned.

Frank had learned the discretion of the roads by now, and did no more than jerk his head almost imperceptibly as he went past. (He proposed to go back to the farm to get his dwindled belongings, as the job was over, and to move on a few miles northward before sleeping.)

As he went, however, he knew that the man had turned and was looking after him: but he made no sign. He had no particular desire for company.

He also knew by instinct, practically for certain, that these two were neither husband and wife, nor father and daughter. The type was obvious.

"I say, sir!"

Frank turned as bucolically as he could.

"I say, sir--can you direct this lady and myself to a lodging?"

Frank had tried to cultivate a low and characterless kind of voice, as of a servant or a groom out of work. He knew he could never learn the proper accent.

"Depends on what kind of lodging you want, sir."

"What'd suit you 'ud suit us," said the Major genially, dropping the "sir."

"I'm going further, sir," said Frank. "I've done my job here."

The Major turned to the girl, and Frank caught the words, "What d'you say, Gertie?" There was a murmur of talk; and then the man turned to him again:

"If you've no objection, sir, we'll come with you. My good lady here is good for a mile or two more, she says, and we'd like some company."

Frank hesitated. He did not in the least wish for company himself. He glanced at the girl again.

"Very good, sir," he said. "Then if you'll wait here I'll be back in five minutes--I've got to get my belongings."

He nodded to the low farm buildings in the valley just below the village.

"We will await you here, sir," said the Major magnificently, stroking his mustache.

As Frank came back up the little hill a few minutes later, he had made up his mind as to what to say and do. It was his first experience of a gentleman-tramp, and it was obvious that under the circ.u.mstances he could not pretend to be anything else himself. But he was perfectly determined not to tell his name. None of his belongings had anything more than his initials upon them, and he decided to use the name he had already given more than once. Probably they would not go far together; but it was worth while to be on the safe side.

He came straight up to the two as they sat side by side with their feet in the ditch.