thus it came about that jim took ship back to trieste, leaving monimé and ian to go the following week to alexandria, whence the boy and his nurse would journey by a p. and o. liner direct to england.
it was a blustering evening in early november when he arrived in london, and to his sad heart the streets through which he passed and the small hotel where he was to stay were dreary in the extreme. his brain was full of the sunshine of the mediterranean; and the burning passion of his love for monimé seemed to draw all his vitality inwards, and to leave frozen and desolate that part of his entity which had to encounter the immediate world of actuality.
upon the following morning it rained, and for some time he lay in bed, staring out through the wet window-pane at the grey sky and the grimy chimney pots, dreading to arise and meet his fate. his first object was to find mrs. darling. she had always been understanding and sympathetic, and now she would perhaps aid him in his predicament. the news that he was still alive would then have to be broken gently to dolly, and the situation would have to be handled in such a way that she would find it to her advantage to divorce him. his heart sank as the thought occurred to him that very possibly[225] she would welcome his return and refuse to part from him. in that case the game would be lost and life would be intolerable.
at the outset, however, his plans met with a check. an early visit to the flat where mrs. darling lived revealed the fact that she had rented it furnished, and the only address known to the present tenant was that of eversfield. this did not necessarily mean that she was staying with her daughter, and jim was left on the doorstep wondering what was the best way of getting hold of her quickly.
a sudden resolve caused him to hail a taxi and to drive to paddington station. he would catch the first train to oxford, pay a surreptitious visit to eversfield, and try to get into touch with smiley-face, his one friend there. the poacher would give him all the news, and would doubtless be of assistance to him in various ways; and his reliability in regard to keeping the secret was unquestionable. smiley was a master of the art of secrecy.
jim was wearing a high-collared raincoat and a slouch hat, and, with the one turned up and the other pulled down, he would easily avoid recognition, even if, in the by-ways he proposed to follow, he were to meet with anybody of his acquaintance. and after all, since he would be obliged, in any event, to come back from the dead for the purpose of his divorce, an indefinite rumour that he had been seen might be the gentlest manner of breaking the news to dolly. he wanted to spare her a sudden shock.
he had not long to wait for a train, and by noon he was setting out across the muddy fields behind[226] the houses of oxford, munching some railway sandwiches as he went. the rain had cleared off, but the sky was still grey; and the mild, misty atmosphere of the thames valley filled his heart with gloom and brought recollections of the days of his captivity crowding back into his mind. he could hardly believe that he had been absent not much more than six months. he had lived through an eternity in that brief space.
nobody was encountered on the way, and when he mounted the last stile, and stepped into the familiar pathway behind the church at eversfield he was still a solitary figure, moving like a ghost through the damp mist.
it was his intention now to skirt the village, and to walk on to the isolated cottage where smiley-face lived with old jenny; but the silence of his surroundings, and the deathlike stillness of the little church, induced him to creep across the graveyard and to slip through the door into the building.
in the aisle he stood for a while lost in thought; while the old clock in the gallery ticked out the seconds. he felt as though he were a spirit come back from the dead; and, indeed, the sight of the familiar pews, the escutcheons, and the memorial tablets of his ancestors, produced in him a sensation such as a midnight ghost might feel when called out of death’s celestial dream to walk again amidst the scenes of his misdeeds.
suddenly a new and shining brass tablet at the side of the chancel caught his eye; and he hastened forward, his heart beating with a kind of dread of[227] that which he would see written thereon for all to read. the inscription was truly staggering:—
in grateful and undying memory of james champernowne tundering-west, esquire, of eversfield manor, who, after an unassuming but exemplary life, marked by true christian piety and an unswerving devotion to duty, met an untimely death, in the flower of his manhood, at the hand of an assassin, near pisa, italy, this stone has been set up by his sorrowing widow, dorothy tundering-west.
be thou faithful unto death, and i will give thee a crown of life.—rev. ii. 10.
“good lord!” jim muttered, his sallow face for a moment red with shame. “and in face of this, i have got to come back to life, so that this ‘sorrowing widow’ may divorce me, and thereby empower me to give the name of tundering-west to my son and leave him in my will the property i abandoned! a pretty muddle!”
he turned away, sick at heart. “o england, england!” he whispered. “dear nation of hypocrites!—at all costs keeping up the pretence so that the traditional example may be set for coming generations.... presently they will remove this tablet, and instead they will scrawl across their memories the words: ‘he failed in his duty, because he hid not his dirty linen.’”
he almost ran from the church.
during the continuation of his walk he came upon two of the villagers, but in each case he was able to turn to the hedge as though searching for the last remaining blackberries, and so avoided a face-to-face encounter. his road led him past the[228] back of the woods of the manor, those woods whither he had so often fled for comfort; and it occurred to him that before walking the further two miles to jenny’s cottage he might whistle the call which used to bring the poacher to him in the old days. it was just the sort of misty afternoon on which smiley was wont to slip in amongst the trees.
he therefore stepped into a gap in the encircling hedge of bramble and thorn, the straight muddy road passing into the haze behind him, and the brown, misty woods, carpeted with wet leaves, before him; and, curving his hand around his mouth, he uttered that long low whistle which sounded like the wail of a lost soul, and which more than once had struck terror into the heart of some passing yokel.
thrice he repeated it, pausing between to listen for the answering call and the familiar cracking of the twigs; and he was about to make a final attempt when of a sudden he heard a slight sound upon the road some fifty yards away. turning quickly, he saw the ragged, well-remembered figure dart out from the hedge into the middle of the road, eagerly running to right and left like a dog that has lost the scent. he was hatless, and his mop of dirty red hair was unmistakable.
jim stepped out into the roadway, and thereat smiley-face came bounding towards him, his arms stretched wide, his smile extending from ear to ear, and his little blue eyes agleam.
“hullo, smiley, old sport!” said jim, holding out his hand; but he was wholly unprepared for the scene which followed.
[229]
smiley’s knees seemed to give way under him, and, snatching at jim’s hand, he stumbled and fell forward upon the grass at the roadside, panting, coughing, and laughing. “o god! o god! o god!” he gasped. “i knew you was alive, sir: i knew it in me bones.”
he pulled himself up on to his knees, and held jim’s hand to his face, hugging it in a sort of frenzy of animal delight.
“get up!” said jim, sharply. “what’s the matter with you?”
“i dunno,” smiley answered, sheepishly, clambering to his feet. “i felt sort o’ dizzy-dazzy like. i get took like that sometimes. i ’ad the doctor to me once: he told old jenny it was my ticket home. that’s what ’e said it was: i heerd ’im say it to ’er.”
“been ill, have you?” jim asked, putting his hand on the poacher’s shoulder, and observing now how haggard the face had grown.
“i’ll be fit as a fiddle now you’ve come back,” he answered, laughing. “i knew you wasn’t dead! murdered, they said you was; but i says to old jenny: ‘i’ll not believe it,’ i says; ‘not with ’im able to floor i with one twist of his ’and. ’e’s just gone off tramping,’ i says. ’e’s gone back to the roads.... ’e never could abide a bedroom.’”
“well, you were right, smiley,” jim replied. “i couldn’t stick it any longer, and so i quitted. but i mustn’t be seen, you understand. i’m dead. i’ve only come down here to get into touch with you, and find out how things are going on.”
“friends stick to friends,” the poacher crooned, intoning the words like a chant. “i never ’ad no[230] friend except you. it seems like i given you everything i got inside my ’ead.”
they entered the wood together, and sat down side by side upon a fallen tree trunk. jim questioned him about dolly, and was told that she was living quietly at the manor, a little widow in a pretty black dress; and that her mother sometimes came to stay with her, but was not at present in eversfield, so far as he knew.
“do you think she misses me?” jim asked.
smiley wagged his head. “i wouldn’t like to say for sure,” he answered; “but betwixt you and me, sir, that there mr. merrivall do spend a deal o’ time at the manor. jane potts, his ’ousekeeper, be terrible mad about it. they do say her watches him like a ferret. it’s jealousy, seeing her’s been as good as a wife to ’im, these many years. but he’s that took with your lady, sir, he can’t see what’s brewing. seems like as they’d make a match of it when her mourning’s up.”
“the devil they would!” jim exclaimed, his face lighting up. “why, then, she’ll be very willing to divorce me.... that’s good news, smiley!”
the poacher looked perplexed. “divorce you?” he asked. “baint you staying dead, then?”
jim put his hand on smiley’s shoulder again. “look here,” he said, “i told you once that if ever i confided my troubles to anybody it would be to you. can i trust you to hold your tongue?”
smiley exposed all his yellow teeth in a wide grin. “you can trust i through thick and thin, same as what you said once. they could tear my[231] liver out, but they’d not make i tell what you said i mustn’t tell; and that’s gospel.”
thereupon jim explained the whole situation to him, telling him how in a far country he had found again the woman he ought to have married, and how he hoped that dolly would free him.
“it’s life or death, smiley,” he said earnestly. “if my wife welcomes me back from the grave, and claims her rights, i shall put a bullet through my head, for i could not be the husband of a sham thing now that i know what it is to love a real woman. oh, man, i’m devoured by love. i’m burning to be back with her, and with the son she has borne me. don’t you see i’m in hell, and the fires of hell are consuming me?”
the poacher scratched his towsled red hair. “yes, i see,” he said. “and i reckon her’s waiting for you over there in them furrin lands where the sun’s shining and the birds are singing. when they told i you was dead i says to old jenny you’d only gone to those countries you used to talk about, where the trees are green the year round, and you look down into the water and see the trout a-sliding over mother-o’-pearl. ‘’e’s heard the temple-bells a-calling,’ i says, ‘the same as ’e sang about that day in the parish-room,’ i says, ‘and ’e’s just sitting lazy by the river, and maybe the queen of them parts is a-kissing of ’is ’and.’”
jim laughed aloud. “smiley, you’re a poet,” he said, “but you came pretty near the truth, only it was i who was kissing her hand.”
for a while longer they talked, but at length jim proposed that the poacher should go at once to ted[232] barnes, the postman, and find out whether mrs. darling was at the manor or not, and if not, perhaps ted could be induced to tell him the address to which her letters were forwarded. “say you want to send her a couple of rabbits,” jim suggested, with a laugh. he looked at his watch. “it will be dusk in two hours or so. meet me here at about that time, just before it is dark.”
smiley seemed eager to be of service, and, repeatedly touching his forelock, went off on his mission in high spirits, turning round to wave a dirty hand to his adored friend as he glided away amongst the tree trunks into the haze. thereupon jim set off for a walk in the direction of the neighbouring village of bedley-sutton, in order to pass the time; and it was an hour later that he returned to the woods of the manor.
there was still another hour to wait before he might expect smiley’s return; and he therefore strolled through the silent woods, visiting with gloomy curiosity the various well-remembered scenes of his days of captivity. “how could i ever have stood it?” he questioned himself; yet at the back of his mind there was the overwhelming consciousness that here was the home of his forefathers, the home he wished to hand on to his son, but that now it belonged to dolly, a woman to whom he felt no sense of relationship, and ultimately it would pass out of his family, unless he laid claim to it anew.
the turmoil in his mind was extreme, and his dilemma was made more desperate by the thought that monimé, whose instinctive wisdom and practical sympathy might now be so helpful, must be[233] shut out from these events and kept in ignorance of his perplexity. he yearned to write to her and make a clean breast of it, yet he feared the blighting effect of such a confession of crude error and deception. with his whole heart he detested himself.
his wandering footsteps led him at length to a point not far distant from the bottom of the manor garden. he had been threading his way unconsciously through undergrowth and brambles, carrying his coat over his arm and his hat in his hand; and he was about to step out on to the mossy pathway which led to the garden gate when suddenly he heard voices at no great distance, and with beating heart, he stepped back into a thicket and crouched there behind the tall-growing bracken.
a moment later he was staring with flushed face at the approaching figures of dolly and george merrivall, who were strolling towards him, she gazing up at her middle-aged companion, and he, his arm about her, looking down at her with his large fish-like eyes. the picture stamped itself savagely upon his mind.
dolly was wearing a smart black coat and skirt, and a black-and-white scarf was flung around her neck. a saucy little black felt hat, adorned with a stiff feather, showed up her golden hair and the fair complexion of her childlike face. merrivall, in a new walking-suit of grey homespun, a large cap to match, and grey stockings covering his thin legs, seemed to be clothed to approximate to the grey haze of the afternoon; and even his face appeared grey, like the dead ashes of a fire long burnt out.
[234]
soon they were close at hand, and jim could hear their words.
“o george,” dolly was saying, “how frightening the woods are in the half-light! i believe they really are haunted. why did you dare me to come here?”
“it was you who proposed it,” he answered, shortly.
“did i?” she replied, looking up at him with innocent eyes. “well, i’m not really afraid when you are with me. you’re so strong, so protective. i suppose there’s nothing in the world that could frighten you.”
“not many things,” he agreed, with a brave toss of his head.
she pressed his arm. “you know, that’s what i always missed so much in poor jim. i could never look to him for protection; i could never lean on him. and, you see, i’m such a little coward, really: you should see me running sometimes from some silly thing that has startled me.”
“my little fawn!” he murmured, lifting her hand to his lips.
jim’s eyes were wild. “the same old game!” he muttered to himself, as he peered at them between the wet, brown leaves of the bracken.
“you need a man to take care of you,” merrivall continued. “how long must we wait before we can announce our engagement?”
“you are impatient, george,” she replied. “even though i never really loved jim, i feel i ought to give his memory the tribute of the usual year. people who don’t know how he forced me to marry him and how brutally he ill-treated me, would say unkind things if i married you any sooner than that.”
[235]
merrivall remained silent for a moment, standing still upon the mossy pathway. “nobody would know if we got married at once at a registry office,” he said at length. “we could go abroad for some months.”
she looked up at him archly. “a wife is a very expensive thing you know,” she smiled. “why, a woman’s clothes alone cost a fortune. you see it isn’t only what shows on the outside—it’s all the wonderful things underneath....”
they passed on out of earshot, leaving jim, who remembered so well her tricks, consumed by fierce anger, and overwhelmed by his destiny. if dolly married this man, the final complication would be reached, and the legal difficulties would be multiplied out of all reckoning. moreover, the thought that the home of the tundering-wests should pass to a washed-out drunken remittance man enhanced the value of the estate a hundredfold in his eyes. he felt inclined to reveal himself at once: he was mad with rage at her misrepresentation of the facts of their relationship.
a few moments later merrivall stopped short, looking at his watch; and, as he turned, jim could hear again his words. “good gracious!” he exclaimed. “i shall be late for the whist drive. what am i thinking of!”
he took dolly’s hand and ran back at a jog-trot towards the gate. as soon as they had passed him and were hidden by the bend in the path, jim rose to his feet and hurried after them. he had no settled purpose: he wished only to follow them. when he came within fifty yards of the border of the woods, however, he paused behind a tree, and[236] watched merrivall as he hastened across the garden, leaving dolly panting at the gate. she was perhaps a little annoyed at his precipitation, and thought it more dignified to let him be, now that she was back in the safety of her garden and the fearsome woods were behind her.
after a lapse of a minute or two jim observed that she was looking from side to side as though she had lost something, and soon he could see that she had dropped one of her gloves, and was trying to pluck up her courage to enter the gloomy dimness of the haunted woods once more in order to find it. his eye searched the pathway, and presently he discerned the missing glove lying not more than a few yards from him, a little further into the woods.
he had no time to conceal himself before dolly came running down the pathway, looking furtively to right and left. she passed without seeing him and retrieved the glove; but as she turned to retrace her steps she caught sight of him and started back, uttering a cry of fright.
flight seemed useless to jim: the crisis had come, and in his bitter wrath he gladly faced it. slowly and deliberately he stepped forward on to the pathway and stood there barring her way. his raincoat and hat were still amongst the bracken at his former place of hiding, and now he stood silently in the grey and ghostly haze, wearing an old suit of clothes which she knew well, his dark hair falling untidily about his forehead, his face ashen white, his eyes burning with anger, his whole attitude menacing and vindictive.
dolly’s terror was horrible to behold. her right[237] hand and arm beat at the air conclusively; the knuckles of her left hand were thrust between her chattering teeth; her eyes were dilated, and her eyebrows seemed to have gone up into her hair.
“i didn’t mean it, jim!” she gasped. “i didn’t mean it! go away! i’ll tell him the truth; i’ll tell him you were good to me ... o god, take him away!... go back to your grave, jim. o god, take him away, take him away ...!”
her voice rose to a shriek; and, falling upon her knees, she beat the soft moss of the pathway with her fists in frenzy.
“get up, you little fool!” jim snapped. “i’m not a ghost. i’m alive: look at me.”
she stared at him with her mouth open, crawled forward, and rose to her feet. suddenly, as the truth seemed to dawn upon her, the colour surged into her cheeks, and there came an expression of hatred into her face which jim had not seen before, and which wholly surpassed the animosity he himself felt.
“you’re alive?” she gasped. “you weren’t murdered? you’ve just played a trick on me?”
“yes,” he answered. “i didn’t mean to turn up again, only circumstances have compelled me to.”
“you can’t come back!” she cried, wringing her hands in such desperation that a certain degree of pity was added to jim’s tumult of emotions. “you’re dead: you can’t come back to life again, you can’t, you can’t!... spoiling everything like this, you beast!—you devil! oh, i might have guessed it was all a dirty trick to spite me. you’ve been living with some other woman, i suppose. well, go back to her. i’ve done with you. nobody wants you[238] here: we all thanked heaven when you died. you were always impossible.”
she moved to and fro, now twisting her gloves in her hands, now pointing at him with shaking fingers, and now clutching at her breast and throat.
“well, there it is,” jim said, feeling himself to be in the wrong. “i’m sorry about it all, but here i am, alive. i’m not going to bother you. all i want is for you to divorce me for desertion, so that i can be quit of you and eversfield for the rest of my life.”
“divorce you?” she repeated, furiously. “divorce a dead man? make myself a laughing stock? why, i’ve only just paid for a memorial tablet for you in the church; a lying tablet, too, in which i’ve called myself your ‘sorrowing widow.’ it isn’t true. i felt no sorrow: i think i always detested you. i should never have married you if it hadn’t been for mother saying you were such a good match. and now, just when i’ve found a real man, a man who will look after me, you come sneaking home again, prowling about like a tramp, or a burglar, or something. i wish to god you were dead!”
under her lashing tongue, jim was nonplussed. he wanted to tell her how she had made his life impossible by her shams and pretences, her crude view of marriage, her intrinsic uselessness; but words were not forthcoming. “as far as you are concerned,” he said lamely, “i shall be dead as soon as you divorce me. it will mean postponing your marriage for a few months: that’s all.”
“what have you came back for?” she cried, at length. “is it money you want? i suppose it’s a sort of blackmail.”
[239]
“no, i don’t want money,” he said. “i’ll leave you the bulk of the estate. but i may as well tell you right away, you will only have a life-interest in this place. on your death it will revert to me and my successors. those are my terms; and if you don’t agree to them, i’ll claim the whole estate again and make you only an allowance.”
“oh, you fiend!” she cried, beside herself once more with fury. “the utter cruelty and callousness of it! it’s just a practical joke you’ve played on me, coming back like a cad when we all thought you were dead and done with. i’ll tell everybody: i’ll make your name stink in the nostrils of every man who is a gentleman.”
jim shrugged his shoulders; and, suddenly, to his amazement she leapt at him and dug her nails into his face. he grabbed hold of her arms, and for a dreadful moment they struggled like two savages. then she broke loose from him and dashed away amongst the misty trees at the side of the pathway, stumbling through the bracken, and crying out to him disjointed words of fury. for some moments jim stood staring after her, listening to the crackling of the twigs which marked her progress. she was working round, it seemed, towards the gate of the manor, and presently the sounds ceased, as though she had paused to get her breath.
thereat jim walked back towards his rendezvous, recovering his coat and hat on the way. his brain was confused and distracted, and a feeling of nausea was upon him. passionately he hated himself; and miserably he asked himself what monimé would think of the whole unsavoury business were she ever to hear of it.
