Part 3

“And I hope you’re going to look after that poor girl when her time comes,” she said.

Bowden nodded.

“Never fear! I’d suner the child was hers than that niece of Steer’s.”

The schoolmistress was silent.

“Well,” she said at last, “it’s an unchristian state of mind.”

“Yu go to Steer, ma’am, an’ see whether he’ll be more Christian-like. He ’olds the plate out Sundays.”

This was precisely what the good lady did, more perhaps from curiosity than in proselytizing mood.

“What!” said Steer, who was installing a beehive; “when that God-darned feller put his son up to jilting my niece!”

“And you a Christian, Mr. Steer!”

“There’s a limit to that, ma’am,” said Steer dryly. “In my opinion, not even our Lord could have put up with that feller. Don’t you waste your breath trying to persuade me.”

“Dear me!” murmured the schoolmistress. “I don’t know which of you is worst.”

The only people, in fact, who did know were Steer and Bowden, whose convictions about each other increased as the spring came in with song and leaf and sunshine, and there was no son to attend to the sowing and the calving, and no niece to make the best butter in the parish.

Towards the end of May, on a ‘brave’ day, when the wind was lively in the ash-trees and the buttercups bright gold, the girl Pansy had her hour; and on the following morning Bowden received this letter from his son.

“DEAR FATHER,

“They don’t let us tell where we are so all I can say is there’s some crumps come over that stop at nothing and you could bury a waggon where they hit. The grub is nothing to complain of. Hope you have done well with calves. The green within sight of here wouldn’t keep a rabbit alive half a day. The thing I wish to say is If I have a son by you know who--call it Edward, after you and me. It makes you think out here. She would like to hear perhaps that I will marry her if I come back so as not to have it on my mind. There is some German prisoners in our section--big fellows and proper swine with their machine-guns I can tell you. Hope you are well as this leaves me. Has that swine Steer given over asking for his money? I would like to see the old farm again. Tell granma to keep warm. No more now from

“Your loving son “NED.”

After standing for some minutes by the weighing machine trying to make head or tail of his own sensations, Bowden took the letter up to the girl Pansy, lying beside her offspring in her narrow cabin of a room. In countrymen who never observe themselves, a letter or event which ploughs up fallow land of feeling, or blasts the rock of some prejudice, causes a prolonged mental stammer or hiatus. So Ned wanted to marry the girl if he came home! The Bowdens were an old family, the girl cross-bred. It wasn’t fitting! And the news that Ned had it on his mind brought home to Bowden as never before the danger his son was in. With profound instinct he knew that compunction did not seriously visit those who felt life sure and strong within them; so that there was a kind of superstition in the way he took the letter up to the girl. After all, the child was as much bone of Ned’s bone and of his own as if the girl had been married in church--a boy too. He gave it her with the words: “Here’s a present for yu and Edward the seventh.”

The village widow, accustomed to attend these simple cases, stepped outside, and while the girl was reading, Bowden sat down on the low seat beneath the little window. The ceiling just touched his head if he remained standing. Her coarse nightgown fell back from her strong arms and neck, her hair showed black and lustreless on the coarse pillow; he could not see her face for the letter, but he heard her sigh. Somehow he felt sorry.

“Shid ought to du yu gude,” he said.

Dropping the letter, so that her eyes met his, the girl spoke.

“Tisn’ nothin’ to me; Ned don’t care for me no more.”

Something inexpressibly cheerless in the tone of her voice, and uncannily searching in her dark gaze, disturbed Bowden.

“Cheer up!” he murmured; “yu’m got a monstrous baby there, all to yureself.”

Going up to the bed, he clucked his tongue, and held his finger out to the baby. He did it softly and with a sort of native aptitude.

“He’m a proper little man.” Then he took up the letter, for there ‘wasn’t,’ he felt, ‘no yuse in leavin’ it there against Ned if an’ in case he should change his mind when he came safe ’ome.’ But as he went out he saw the girl Pansy put the baby to her breast, and again he felt that disturbance, as of pity. With a nod to the village widow, who was sitting on an empty grocery box reading an old paper by the light coming through half a skylight, Bowden descended the twisting stairs to the kitchen. His mother was seated where the sunlight fell, her bright little dark eyes moving among their mass of wrinkles. Bowden stood a moment watching her.

“Well, Granny,” he said, “yu’m a great-granny now.”

The old lady nodded, mumbled her lips a little in a smile, and rubbed one hand on the other. Bowden experienced a shock.

“There ain’t no sense in et all,” he muttered to himself, without knowing too well what he meant.

VIII

Bowden did not attend when three weeks later the baby was christened Edward Bowden. He spent the June morning in his cart with a bull-calf, taking it to market. The cart did not run well, because the weight of the calf made it jerk and dip. Besides, though used to it all his life, he had never become quite case-hardened to separating calves from their mothers. Bowden had a queer feeling for cattle, more feeling indeed than he had for human beings. He always sat sulky when there was a little red beast tied up and swaying there behind him. Somehow he felt for it, as if in some previous existence he might himself have been a red bull-calf.

Passing through a village someone called:

“’Eard the nus? They beat the Germans up proper yest’day mornin’.”

Bowden nodded. News from the war was now nothing but a reminder of how that fellow Steer had deprived him of Ned’s help and company. The war would be over some day, he supposed, but they didn’t seem to get on with it, gaining ground one day and losing it the next, and all the time passing this law and that law interfering with the land. Didn’t they know the land couldn’t be interfered with--the cuckoos? Steer, of course, was all part of this interference with the land--the fellow grew wheat where anybody could have told him it couldn’t be grown!

The day was hot, the road dusty, and that chap Steer hanging about the market like the colley he was--so that Bowden imbibed freely at ‘The Drake’ before making a start for home.

When he entered his kitchen the newly christened baby was lying in a grocery box, padded with a pillow and shawl, just out of the sunlight in which old Mrs. Bowden sat moving her hands as if weaving a spell. Bowden’s sheepdog had lodged its nose on the edge of the box, and was sniffing as if to ascertain the difference in the baby. In the background the girl Pansy moved on her varying business; she looked strong again, but pale still, and ‘daverdy,’ Bowden thought. He stood beside the box contemplating the ‘monstrous’ baby. It wasn’t like Ned, nor anything, so far as he could see. It opened its large grey eyes while he stood there. That colley Steer would never have a grandchild, not even one born like this! The thought pleased him. He clucked to the baby with his tongue, and his sheepdog jealously thrust its head, with mass of brushed-back snowy hair, under his hand.

“Hullo!” said Bowden, “what’s matter wi’ yu?”

He went out presently, in the slanting sunlight, to look at some beasts he had on the rough ground below his fields, and the dog followed. Among the young bracken and the furze not yet in bloom again, he sat down on a stone. The afternoon was glorious beyond all words, now that the sun was low, and its glamour had motion, as it were, and flight across the ash-trees, the hawthorn, and the fern. One may-tree close beside him was still freakishly in delicate flower, with a sweet and heavy scent; in the hedge the round cream-coloured heads of the elder-flower flashed, flat against the glistening air, while the rowans up the gulley were passing already from blossom towards the brown unrounded berries.

There was all the magic of transition from season to season, even in the song of the cuckoo, which flighted arrow-like to a thorn-tree up the rocky dingle, and started a shrill calling. Bowden counted his beasts, and marked the fine sheen on their red coats. He was drowsy from his hot day, from the cider he had drunk, and the hum of the flies in the fern. Unconsciously he enjoyed a deep and sensuous peace of warmth and beauty. Ned had said there was no green out there. It was unimaginable! No green--not the keep of a rabbit; not a curling young caterpillar-frond of fern; no green tree for a bird to light on! And Steer had sent him out there! Through his drowsiness that thought came flapping its black wings. Steer! Who had no son to fight, who was making money hand over fist. It seemed to Bowden that a malevolent fortune protected that stingy chap, who couldn’t even take his glass.

There were little blue flowers, speedwell and milkwort, growing plentifully in the rough grass around; Bowden noted, perhaps for the first time, those small flower luxuries of which Steer had deprived his son by sending him to where no grass grew.

He rose at length, retracing his slow-lifted tread up the lane, deep-soiled with the dried dung of his cows, where innumerable gnats danced level with the elder-blossom and the ash leaves. The village postman was leaving the yard when Bowden entered it. The man stopped in the doorway, and turned his bearded face and dark eyes blinking in the level sunlight.

“There’s a talegram for yu, Mist Bowden,” he said, and vanished.

“What’s that?” said Bowden dully, and passed in under the porch.

The ‘talegram’ lay unopened on the kitchen table, and Bowden stared at it. Very few such missives had come his way, perhaps not half a dozen in his fifty odd years. He took it up, handling it rather as he might have handled a fowl that would peck, and broke it open with his thumb.

“Greatly regret inform you your son killed in action on seventh instant. War Office.”

He read it through again and again, before he sat down heavily, dropping it on the table. His round solid face looked still and blind, its mouth just a little open. The girl Pansy came up and stood beside him.

“Here!” he said, “read that.”

The girl read it and put her hands up to her ears.

“That idn’ no yuse,” he said, with surprising quickness.

The girl’s pale face crimsoned; she uttered a little wail and ran from the room.

In the whitewashed kitchen the only moving things were the clock’s swinging pendulum and old Mrs. Bowden’s restless eyes, close to the geranium on the window-sill, where the last of the sunlight fell before passing behind the house. Minute after minute ticked away before Bowden made a movement--his head bowed, his shoulders rounded, his knees apart. Then he got up.

“God for ever darn the blasted colley,” he said slowly, gathering up the telegram. “Where’s my stick?”

Lurching blindly he walked round the room, watched by the old woman’s little dark bright eyes, and went out. He went at his unvaried gait on the path towards Steer’s, slowly climbing the two stiles and emerging from the field into Steer’s farmyard.

“Master in?” he said to the boy who stood by a cow byre.

“No.”

“Where is ’e, then?”

“Not ’ome from Bickton yet.”

“Oh! he idden! Gone in the trap, eh?”

“Ya-a-s.”

And Bowden turned up into the lane. There was a dull buzzing in his ears, but his nostrils moved, savouring the evening scents of grass, of cow-dung, dried earth, and hedgerow weeds. His nose was alive, the rest within him all knotted into a sort of bitter tangle round his heart. The blood beat in his temples, and he dwelled heavily on foot and foot. Along this road Steer must come in his cart--God for ever darn him! Beyond his own top pasture he reached the inn abutting on the road. From the bench in there under the window he could see anyone who passed. The innkeeper and two labourers were all the company as yet. Bowden took his usual mug and sat down on the window-seat. He did not speak of his loss, and they did not seem to know of it. He just sat with his eyes on the road. Now and then he responded to some question, now and then got up and had his mug refilled. Someone came in; he noted the lowering of voices. They were looking at him. They knew. But he sat on silent till the inn closed. It was still daylight when he lurched back up the road toward home, intent on not missing Steer. The sun had gone down; it was very still. He leaned against the wicket gate of his top field. Nobody passed. Twilight crept up. The moon rose. An owl began hooting. Behind him in the field from a group of beech-trees the shadows stole out ever so faint in the flowery grass, and darkened slowly as the moonlight brightened.

Bowden leaned his weight against the wood--one knee crooked and then the other--in dogged stupefaction. He had begun imagining things, but not very much. No grass, no trees, where his son had been killed, no birds, no animals; what could it be like--all murky grey in the moonlight--and Ned’s face all grey! So he would never see Ned’s face any more! That colley Steer--that colley Steer! His dead son would never see and hear and smell his home again. Vicarious home-sickness for this native soil and scent and sound--this nest of his fathers from time beyond measuring--swept over Bowden. He thought of the old time when his wife was alive and Ned was born. His wife--why! she had brought him six, and out of the lot he had only ‘saved’ Ned, and he was a twin. He remembered how he had told the doctor that he wasn’t to worry about the ‘maiden’ so long as he saved the boy. He had wanted the boy to come after him here; and now he was dead and dust! That colley Steer!

He heard the sound of wheels--a long way off, but coming steadily. Gripping his stick he stood up straight, staring down the road all barred with moonlight and the dusk. Closer came the rumble, the clop-clop of hoofs, till the shape of horse and cart came out of the darkness into a bright patch. Steer’s right enough! Bowden opened his wicket gate and waited. The cart came slowly; Bowden saw that the mare was lame, and Steer was leading her. He lurched a yard out from the gate.

“’Ere,” he said, “I want to speak to yu. Come in ’ere!”

The moonlight fell on Steer’s thin bearded face.

“What’s that?” he answered.

Bowden turned towards the gate.

“Hitch the mare up; I want to settle my account.”

He saw Steer stand quite still as if debating, then pass the reins over the gate. His voice came sharp and firm:

“Have you got the money, then?”

“Ah!” said Bowden, and drew back under the trees. He saw Steer coming cautiously--the colley--with a stick in his hand. He raised his own.

“That’s for Ned,” he said and struck with all his might.

The blow fell short a little; Steer staggered back, raising his stick.

He struck again, but the sticks clashed, and dropping his own, Bowden lurched at his enemy’s throat. He had twice Steer’s strength and bulk; half his lean quickness and sobriety. They swayed between the beech trunks, now in shadow, now in moonlight which made their faces livid, and showed the expression in their eyes, of men out to kill. They struggled chest against chest, striving to throw each other; with short hard gruntings. They reeled against a trunk, staggered and unclinched, and stood, breathing hard, glaring at each other. All those months of hatred looked out of their eyes, and their hands twitched convulsively. Suddenly Steer went on his knees and gripping Bowden’s legs strained at them, till the heavy unsteady bulk pitched forward and fell over Steer’s back with stunning weight. They rolled on the grass then, all mixed up, till they came apart, and sat facing each other, dazed--Bowden from the drink shaken up within him, Steer from the weight which had pitched upon his spine. They sat as if each knew there was no hurry and they were there to finish this; watching each other, bent a little forward, their legs stuck out in the moonlight, their mouths open, breathing in hard gasps, ridiculous--to each other! And suddenly the church bell began to toll. Its measured sound at first reached only the surface of Bowden’s muddled brain, dully devising the next attack; then slid into the chambers of his consciousness. Tolling? Tolling? For whom? His hands fell by his sides. Impulse and inhibition, action and superstition, revenge and mourning gripped each other and rolled about within him. A long minute passed. The bell tolled on. A whinny came from Steer’s lame mare outside the gate. Suddenly Bowden staggered up, turned his back on his enemy, and, lurching in the moonlight, walked down the field for home. The clover among the wild grasses smelled sweet; he heard the sound of wheels--Steer had started again! Let him go! ’Twasn’t no use--’twouldn’ bring Ned back! He reached the yard door and stood leaning against it. Cold streaming moonlight filled the air, covered the fields; the pollarded aspens shivered above him; on the low rock-wall the striped roses were all strangely coloured; and a moth went by brushing his cheek.

Bowden lowered his head, as if butting at the beauty of the night. The bell had ceased to toll--no sound now but the shiver of the aspens, and the murmur of a stream! ’Twas monstrous peaceful--surely!

And in Bowden something went out. He had not the heart to hate.

1921.

THE MAN WHO KEPT HIS FORM

In these days every landmark is like Alice’s flamingo-croquet-mallet--when you refer to it, the creature curls up into an interrogation mark and looks into your face; and every cornerstone resembles her hedgehog-croquet-ball, which, just before you can use it, gets up and walks away. The old flavours of life are out of fashion, the old scents considered stale; ‘gentleman’ is a word to sneer at, and ‘form’ a sign of idiocy.

And yet there are families in the British Isles in which gentility has persisted for hundreds of years, and though you may think me old-fashioned and romantic, I am convinced that such gentlefolk often have a certain quality, a kind of inner pluck bred into them, which is not to be despised at all.

This is why I tell you my recollections of Miles Ruding.

My first sight of him--if a new boy may look at a monitor--was on my rather wretched second day at a Public School. The three other pups who occupied an attic with me had gone out, and I was ruefully considering whether I had a right to any wall-space on which to hang two small oleographs depicting very scarlet horsemen on very bay horses, jumping very brown hedges, which my mother had bought me, thinking they might be suitable to the manly taste for which Public Schools are celebrated. I had taken them out of my playbox, together with the photographs of my parents and eldest sister, and spread them all on the window-seat. I was gazing at the little show lugubriously when the door was opened by a boy in ‘tails.’

“Hallo!” he said. “You new?”

“Yes,” I answered in a mouselike voice.

“I’m Ruding. Head of the House. You get an allowance of two bob weekly when it’s not stopped. You’ll see the fagging lists on the board. You don’t get any fagging first fortnight. What’s your name?”

“Bartlet.”

“Oh, ah!” He examined a piece of paper in his hand. “You’re one of mine. How are you getting on?”

“Pretty well.”

“That’s all right.” He seemed about to withdraw, so I asked him hastily: “Please, am I allowed to hang these pictures?”

“Rather--any pictures you like. Let’s look at them!” He came forward. When his eyes fell on the array, he said abruptly, “Oh, sorry!” and, taking up the oleos, he turned his back on the photographs. A new boy is something of a psychologist, out of sheer fright, and when he said “Sorry!” because his eyes had fallen on the effigies of my people, I felt somehow that he couldn’t be a beast. “You got these at Tomkins’,” he said. “I had the same my first term. Not bad. I should put ’em up here.”

While he was holding them to the wall I took a ‘squint’ at him. He seemed to me of a fabulous height--about five feet ten, I suppose; thin and bolt upright. He had a stick-up collar--‘barmaids’ had not yet come in--but not a very high one, and his neck was rather long. His hair was peculiar, dark and crisp, with a reddish tinge; and his dark-grey eyes were small and deep in, his cheekbones rather high, his cheeks thin and touched with freckles. His nose, chin, and cheekbones all seemed a little large for his face as yet. If I may put it so, there was a sort of unfinished finish about him. But he looked straight, and had a nice smile.

“Well, young Bartlet,” he said handing me back the pictures, “buck up, and you’ll be all right.”

I put away my photographs, and hung the oleos. Ruding! The name was familiar. Among the marriages in my family pedigree, such as ‘daughter of Fitzherbert,’ ‘daughter of Tastborough,’ occurred the entry, ‘daughter of Ruding,’ some time before the Civil War. Daughter of Ruding! This demigod might be a far-off kinsman. But I felt I should never dare to tell him of the coincidence.

Miles Ruding was not brilliant, but pretty good at everything. He was not well dressed--you did not think of dress in connection with him either one way or the other. He was not exactly popular--being reserved, far from showy, and not rich--but he had no ‘side,’ and never either patronised or abused his juniors. He was not indulgent to himself or others, but he was very just; and, unlike many monitors, seemed to take no pleasure in ‘whopping.’ He never fell off in ‘trials’ at the end of a term, and was always playing as hard at the finish of a match as at the start. One would have said he had an exacting conscience, but he was certainly the last person to mention such a thing. He never showed his feelings, yet he never seemed trying to hide them, as I used always to be. He was greatly respected without seeming to care; an independent, self-dependent bird, who would have cut a greater dash if he hadn’t been so, as it were, uncreative. In all those two years I only had one at all intimate talk with him, which after all was perhaps above the average number, considering the difference in our ages. In my fifth term and Ruding’s last but one, there had been some disciplinary rumpus in the house, which had hurt the dignity of the captain of the football ‘torpid’ eleven--a big Irish boy who played back and was the mainstay of the side. It happened on the eve of our first house match and the sensation may be imagined when this important person refused to play; physically and spiritually sore, he declared for the part of Achilles and withdrew to his tent. The house rocked with pro and con. My sympathies, in common with nearly all below the second fifth, lay with Donelly against the sixth form. His defection had left me captain of the side, so that the question whether we could play at all depended on me. If I declared a sympathetic strike, the rest would follow. That evening, after long hours of ‘_fronde_’ with other rebellious spirits, I was alone and still in two minds, when Ruding came into my room. He leaned against the door, and said: “Well, Bartlet, _you’re_ not going to rat?”

“I--I don’t think Donelly ought to have been--been whopped,” I stammered.

“That as may be,” he said, “but the house comes first. You know that.”

Torn between the loyalties, I was silent.

“Look here, young Bartlet,” he said suddenly, “it’ll be a disgrace to us all, and it hangs on you.”

“All right,” I said sulkily, “I’ll play.”

“Good chap!”

“But I don’t think Donelly ought to have been whopped,” I repeated inanely; “he’s--he’s too big.”