CHAPTER I

BODY WORK

I

It was in early May that Mr. Wriford cast himself into the river. Declining Summer, sullied in her raiment by September's hand, slain by October's, found him still in Mr. Puddlebox's company. But a different Wriford from him whom that jolly gentleman had first met upon the road from Barnet. In body a harder man, what of the open life, the mad adventures, and of the casual work--all manual work--in farm and field that supplied their necessaries when these ran short. And harder man in soul. "You're a confirmed rascal, sir," addressed him the chairman of a Bench of country magistrates before whom--and not their first experience of such--he and Mr. Puddlebox once were haled, their offence that they had been found sleeping in the outbuildings of a rural parsonage.

The rector, a gentleman, appearing unwillingly to prosecute, pleaded for the prisoners. A trivial offence, he urged--a stormy night on which he would gladly have given them shelter had they asked for it, and he turned to the dock with: "Why did you not come and ask for it, my friend?"

"Why, there'd have been no fun in doing that!" said Mr. Wriford.

"Fun!" exclaimed the rector. "No, no fun perhaps. But a hearty welcome I--"

"Oh, keep your hearty welcomes to yourself!" cried Mr. Wriford.

And then the chairman: "You're a confirmed rascal, sir. A confirmed and stubborn rascal. When our good vicar--"

"Well, you're a self-important, over-fed, and very gross-looking pomposity," returned Mr. Wriford.

"Seven days," said the chairman, very swollen. "Take them away, constable."

"Curse me," said Mr. Puddlebox when, accommodated for the night in adjoining cells, they conversed over the partition that divided them. "Curse me, you're no better than a fool, loony, and I challenge any man to be a bigger. Here we are at these vile tasks for a week and would have got away scot free and a shilling from the parson but for your fool's tongue."

"Well, I had to say something to stir them up," explained Mr. Wriford. "I must be doing something all the time, or I get--

"Well, there's better things to do than this cursed foolishness," grumbled Mr. Puddlebox.

"It's new to me," said Mr. Wriford. "That's what I want."

That indeed was what he wanted in these months and ever sought with sudden bursts of fierceness or of irresponsible prankishness. He must be doing something all the time and doing something that brought reprisals, either in form of fatigue that followed hard work in their odd jobs--digging, carting stable refuse, hoeing a long patch of root crops, harvesting which gave the pair steady employment and left them at the turn of the year with a stock of shillings in hand, roadside work where labour had fallen short and a builder was behindhand with a contract for some cottages--or in form of punishment such as followed his truculence before the magistrate or was got by escapades of the nature of their early adventures.

Something that brought reprisals, something to be felt in his body. "Why, you don't understand, you see," Mr. Wriford would cry, responsive to remonstrance from Mr. Puddlebox. "All my life I've felt things here--here in my head," and he would strike his head hard and begin to speak loudly and very fiercely and quickly, so that often his words rolled themselves together or were several times repeated. "In my head, head, head--all mixed up and whirling there so I felt I must scream to let it all out: scream out senseless words and loud roars like uggranddlearrrrohohohgarragarragaddaurrr! Now my head's empty, empty, empty, and I can smash at it as if it didn't belong to me. Look here!"

"Ah, stop it, boy, stop it!" Mr. Puddlebox would cry, and catch at Mr. Wriford's fist that banged in illustration.

"Well, that's just to show you. Man alive, I've stood sometimes in my office with my head in such a whirling crash, and feeling so sick and frightened--that always went with it--that I've felt I must catch by the throat the next man who came in and kill him dead before he could speak to me. In my head, man, in my head--felt things all my life in my head: and in my heart;" and Mr. Wriford would strike himself fiercely upon his breast. "Felt things in my heart so I was always in a torment and always tying myself up tighter and tighter and tighter--not doing this because I thought it was unkind to this person; and doing that because I thought I ought to do it for that person--messing, messing, messing round and spoiling my life with rotten sentiment and rotten ideas of rotten duty. God, when I think of the welter of it all! Now, my boy, it's all over! My head's as empty as an empty bucket and so's my heart. I don't care a curse for anybody or anything. I'm beginning to do what I ought to have done years ago--enjoy myself. It's only my body now; I want to ache it and feel it and hurt it and keep it going all the time. If I don't, if I stop going and going and going, I begin to think; and if I begin to think I begin to go back again. Then up I jump, my boy, and let fly at somebody again, or dig or whatever the work is, as if the devil was in me and until my body is ready to break, and then I say to my body: 'Go on, you devil; go on. I'll keep you at it till you drop. You've been getting soft and rotten while my head was working and driving me. Now it's your turn. But you don't drive me, my boy; I drive you. Get at it!' That's the way of it, Puddlebox. I'm free now, and I'm enjoying myself, and I want to go on doing new things and doing them hard, always and all the time. Now then!"

Mr. Puddlebox: "Sure you're enjoying yourself, boy?"

"Why, of course I am. When it was all this cursed head and all worry I didn't belong to myself. Now it's all body, and I'm my own. I've missed something all my life. Now I'm finding it. I'm finding what it is to be happy--it's not to care. That's the secret of it."

Mr. Puddlebox would shake his head. "That's not the secret of it, boy."

"What is, then?"

"Why, what I've told you: not to think so much about yourself."

"Well, that's just what I'm doing. I'm not caring a curse what happens to me."

"Yes, and thinking about that all the time. That's just where you're spooked, boy."

"Spooked!" Mr. Wriford would cry with an easy laugh. "That's seeing myself like I used to. I've not seen myself for weeks--months."

"But you're not unspooked yet, boy," Mr. Puddlebox would return.

II

They were come west in their tramping--set in that quarter by the motor-car that had run them from that early adventure with the nightshirted and the corduroyed gentlemen. It had alighted them in Wiltshire, and they continued, while splendid summer in imperial days and pageant nights attended them, by easy and haphazard stages down into Dorset and thence through Somerset and Devon into Cornwall by the sea.

Many amazements in these counties and in these months--some of a train with those afforded by the liver-cutting wagoner and by the yellow-toothed farmer bent upon arson; some quieter, but to Mr. Wriford, if he permitted thought, not less amazing--as when he found himself working with his hands and in his sweat for manual wages; some in outrage of law and morals that had shocked the Mr. Wriford of the London days. He must be doing something, as he had told Mr. Puddlebox, and doing something all the time. What he did not tell was that these things--when they were wild, irresponsible, grotesque, wrong, immoral---were done by conscious effort before they were entered upon. Mr. Wriford used to--had to--dare himself to do them. "Now, here you are!" Mr. Wriford would say to himself when by freakish thought some opportunity offered itself. "Here you are! Ah, you funk it! I knew you would. I thought so. You funk it!" And then, thus taunted, would come the sudden burst of fierceness or of irresponsible prankishness, and Mr. Wriford would rush at the thing fiercely, and fiercely begin it, and with increasing fierceness carry it to settlement--one way or the other.

Once, up from a roadside to a labourer who came sturdily by, "I'll fight you for tuppence!" cried Mr. Wriford, facing him. "Ba goom, I'll faight thee for nowt!" said the man and knocked him down, and when again he rushed, furious and bleeding, smashed him again, and laughing at the ease of it, trod on his way.

"Well, why to the devil did you do such a mad thing?" said Mr. Puddlebox, awakened from a doze and tending Mr. Wriford's hurts. "Where to the devil is the sense of such a thing?"

"I thought of it as he came along," said Mr. Wriford, "and I had to do it."

"Why, curse me," cried Mr. Puddlebox, "I mustn't even sleep for your madness, boy."

"Well, I've done it," Mr. Wriford returned, much hurt but fiercely glad. "I've done it, and I'm happy. If I hadn't--oh, you wouldn't understand. That's enough. Let it bleed. Let the damned thing bleed. I like to see it."

He used to like to sit and count his bruises. He used to like, after hard work on some employment, to sit and reckon which muscles ached him most and then to spring up and exercise them so they ached anew. He used to like to sit and count over and over again the money that their casual labours earned him. These--bruises, and aches and shillings--were the indisputable testimony to his freedom, to the fact that he at last was doing things, to the reprisals against which he set his body and full earned. He used to like to go long periods without food. He used to like, when rain fell and Mr. Puddlebox sought shelter, to stand out in the soak of it and feel its soak. These--fastings and discomforts--were manifests that his body was suffering things, and that he was its master and his own.

Through all these excesses--checking him in many, from many dissuading him, in their results supporting him--Mr. Puddlebox stuck to him. That soft, fat, kindly and protective hand came often between him and self-invited violence from strangers by Mr. Puddlebox--when Mr. Wriford was not looking--tapping his head and accompanying the sign with nods and frowns in further illustration, or by more active rescues from his escapades. Chiefly Mr. Puddlebox employed his unfailing good-humour as deterrent of Mr. Wriford's fierceness. He learnt to let the starvation, or the exposure to the elements, or the engagement in some wild escapade, go to a certain pitch, then to argue with Mr. Wriford until he made him angry, then by some jovial whimsicality to bring him against his will to involuntary laughter; then Mr. Wriford would be pliable, consent to eat, to take shelter, to cease his folly. Much further than this Mr. Puddlebox carried the affection he had conceived for Mr. Wriford--and all it cost him. Once when lamentably far gone in his cups, he was startled out of their effects by becoming aware that Mr. Wriford was producing from his pockets articles that glistened beneath the moon where it lit the open-air resting-place to which he had no recollection of having come.

He stared amazed at two watches, a small clock, spoons, and some silver trinkets; and soon by further amazement was completely sobered. "I've done it," said Mr. Wriford, and in his eyes could be seen the gleam, and in his voice heard the nervous exaltation, that always went with accomplishment of any of his fiercenesses. "I've done it! It was a devil of a thing--right into two bedrooms--but I've done it."

Mr. Puddlebox in immense horror: "Done what?"

"Broken in there," and Mr. Wriford jerked back his head in "there's" indication, and Mr. Puddlebox, to his new and frantic alarm, found that a large house stood within fifty paces of them, they in its garden.

"Why, you're--hup!"--cried Mr. Puddlebox--"Blink! Why, what to the devil do you mean--broken in there? What are we,--hup, blink!--doing here?"

"Why, we had a bet," said Mr. Wriford, looking over his prizes and clearly much pleased with himself. "I bet you as we came down the road that I'd break in here before you would. I took the front and you went to the back, but you've been asleep."

"Asleep!" cried Mr. Puddlebox. "I've been drunk. I was drunk." He got on his knees from where he sat and with a furious action fumbled in his coat-tails. From them his bottle of whisky, and Mr. Puddlebox furiously wrenched the cork and hurled the bottle from him. "To hell with it!" cried Mr. Puddlebox as it lay gurgling. "Hell take it. I'll not touch it again. Why, loony--why, you staring, hup! hell! mad loony, if you'd been caught you'd have gone to convict prison, boy. And my fault for this cursed drink. Give me those things. Give them to me and get out of here--get up the road."

"Let 'em alone!" said Mr. Wriford menacingly. "What d'you want with 'em?"

Mr. Puddlebox played the game learnt of experience. He concealed his agitation. He said with his jolly smile: "Why, mean that I will not be beat at anything by you or by any man. I will challenge you or any man at any game and will be beat by none. You've been in and got 'em, boy; now, curse me, I will equal you and beat you for that I will go in and put them back. Play fair, boy. Hand over."

"Well, there you are," said Mr. Wriford, disarmed and much tickled.

"Out you go then, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox, gathering up the trinkets. "Out into the road. You had none of me to interfere with you, and I must have none of you while I go my own way to this."

Mr. Puddlebox took Mr. Wriford to the gate of the grounds, then went back again in much trembling. An open window informed him of Mr. Wriford's place of entry. He leant through to a sofa that stood handy, there deposited the trinkets, and very softly shut the window down. When he rejoined Mr. Wriford, fear's perspiration was streaming from him. "I've had a squeak of it," said Mr. Puddlebox with simulated cheeriness. "Let's out of this, and I'll tell you."

He walked Mr. Wriford long, quickly and far. While he walked he fought again the battle that had been swift victory when he cast his bottle from him; and in future days fought it again and met new tortures in each fight.

"Aren't you going to get any whisky?" asked Mr. Wriford when on a day, pockets lined with harvest money, he noticed Mr. Puddlebox's abstinence.

"Whisky! Hell take such stinking stuff," cried Mr. Puddlebox and sucked in his cheeks--and groaned; then put a hand in his tail-pocket and felt a hard lump rolled in a cloth that lay where the whisky used to lie and said to himself: "Two bottles--two bottles."

It was Mr. Puddlebox's promise to himself, and his lustiest weapon in his battles with his desire, that, on some day that must come somehow, the day when he should be relieved of his charge of Mr. Wriford, he would buy himself two bottles of whisky and sit himself down and drink them. Into the hard lump rolled in the cloth, and composing it, there went daily when his earnings permitted it two coppers. When that sum reached eighty-four--two at three-and-six apiece--his two bottles would be ready for the mere asking.

Wherefore "Two bottles! Two bottles!" Mr. Puddlebox would assure himself when most fiercely his cravings assailed him, and against the pangs of his denial would combine luxurious thoughts of when they should thus be slaked and fears of what might happen to his loony if he now gave way to them.

Much those fears--or the affection whence they rose--cost him in these later days: swiftly their end approached. Much and more as summer passed and autumn came sombrely and chill: swiftly their end as sombre day succeeded sombre day, and they passed down into Cornwall and went along the sombre sea. Village to village, through nature in decay that grey sky shrouded, grey sea dirged: Mr. Puddlebox ever for tarrying when larger town was reached, Mr. Wriford ever for onward--onward, on.