CHAPTER XIV
HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK
I
The circumstance that had intrigued me for so long was determined withan abruptness only less remarkable than the surprise of the onset. Twodeaths within six months brought to me, the first, a competence, thesecond, release from gall and bitterness. For the first time in my lifeI was a free man. At forty one can still look forward, and I put thepast behind me and made plans for the future. There was that book ofmine still waiting to be written.
It was wonderful how the detail of it all came back to me--the plan ofit, the thread of development, even the very phrases that I had toyedwith. The thought of the book brought back a train of associations.There was a phrase I had coined as I had walked out from Ailesworth toStoke-Underhill; a chapter I had roughed out the day I went to seeGinger Stott at Pym. It seemed to me that the whole conception of thebook was associated in some way with that neighbourhood. I remembered atlast that I had first thought of writing it after my return fromAmerica, on the day that I had had that curious experience with thechild in the train. It occurred to me that by a reversal of the process,I might regain many more of my original thoughts; that by going to live,temporarily perhaps, in the neighbourhood of Ailesworth, I might reviveother associations.
The picture of Pym presented itself to me very clearly. I rememberedthat I had once thought that Pym was a place to which I might retire oneday in order to write the things I wished to write. I decided to makethe dream a reality, and I wrote to Mrs. Berridge at the Wood Farm,asking her if she could let me have her rooms for the spring, summer,and autumn.
II
I was all aglow with excitement on the morning that I set out for theHampden Hills. This was change, I thought, freedom, adventure. This wasthe beginning of life, my real entry into the joy of living.
The world was alight with the fire of growth. May had come with a clearsky and a torrent of green was flowing over field, hedge, and wood. Iremember that I thanked "whatever gods there be," that one could live sorichly in the enjoyment of these things.
III
Farmer Bates met me at Great Hittenden Station. His was the onlyavailable horse and cart at Pym, for the Berridges were in a very smallway, and it is doubtful if they could have made both ends meet if Mrs.Berridge had not done so well by letting her two spare rooms.
I have a great admiration for Farmer Bates and Mrs. Berridge. I regretintensely that they should both have been unhappily married. If they hadmarried each other they would undoubtedly have made a success of life.
Bates was a Cockney by birth, but always he had had an ambition to takea farm, and after twenty years of work as a skilled mechanic he hadthrown up a well-paid job, and dared the uncertainties which beset theEnglish farmer. That venture was a constant bone of strife between himand his wife. Mrs. Bates preferred the town. It has always seemed to methat there was something fine about Bates and his love for the land.
"Good growing weather, Mr. Bates," I said, as I climbed up into thecart.
"Shouldn't be sorry to see some more rain," replied Bates, and damped myardour for a moment.
Just before we turned into the lane that leads up the long hill to Pym,we passed a ramshackle cart, piled up with a curious miscellany ofruinous furniture. A man was driving, and beside him sat a slatternlywoman and a repulsive-looking boy of ten or twelve years old, with agreat swollen head and an open, slobbering mouth.
I was startled. I jumped to the conclusion that this was the child I hadseen in the train, the son of Ginger Stott.
As we slowed down to the ascent of the long hill, I said to Bates: "Isthat Stott's boy?"
Bates looked at me curiously. "Why, no," he said. "Them's the 'Arrisons.'Arrison's dead now; he was a wrong 'un, couldn't make a job of it,nohow. They used to live 'ere, five or six year ago, and now 'er'usband's dead, Mrs. 'Arrison's coming back with the boy to live. Worseluck. We thought we was shut of 'em."
"Oh!" I said. "The boy's an idiot, I suppose."
"'Orrible," replied Bates, shaking his head, "'orrible; can't speak nornothing; goes about bleating and baa-ing like an old sheep."
I looked round, but the ramshackle cart was hidden by the turn of theroad. "Does Stott still live at Pym?" I asked.
"Not Ginger," replied Bates. "He lives at Ailesworth. Mrs. Stott and 'erson lives here."
"The boy's still alive then?" I asked.
"Yes," said Bates.
"Intelligent child?" I asked.
"They say," replied Bates. "Book-learnin' and such. They say 'e's readevery book in Mr. Challis's librairy."
"Does he go to school?"
"No. They let 'im off. Leastways Mr. Challis did. They say the ReverendCrashaw, down at Stoke, was fair put out about it."
I thought that Bates emphasised the "on dit" nature of his informationrather markedly. "What do _you_ think of him?" I asked.
"Me?" said Bates. "I don't worry my 'ead about him. I've got too much to_do_." And he went off into technicalities concerning the abundance ofcharlock on the arable land of Pym. He called it "garlic." I saw that itwas typical of Bates that he should have too much to _do_. I reflectedthat his was the calling which begot civilisation.
IV
The best and surest route from Pym to the Wood Farm is, appropriately,by way of the wood; but in wet weather the alternative of various carttracks that wind among the bracken and shrub of the Common, ispreferable in many ways. May had been very dry that year, however, andFarmer Bates chose the wood. The leaves were still light on the beeches.I remember that as I tried to pierce the vista of stems that dipped overthe steep fall of the hill, I promised myself many a romanticexploration of the unknown mysteries beyond.
Everything was so bright that afternoon that nothing, I believe, couldhave depressed me. When I had reached the farm and looked round the low,dark room with its one window, a foot from the ground and two from theceiling, I only thought that I should be out-of-doors all the time. Itamused me that I could touch the ceiling with my head by standing ontiptoe, and I laughed at the framed "presentation plates" from oldChristmas numbers on the walls. These things are merely curious when thesun is shining and it is high May, and one is free to do the desiredwork after twenty years in a galley.
V
At a quarter to eight that evening I saw the sun set behind the hills.As I wandered reflectively down the lane that goes towards ChallisCourt, a blackbird was singing ecstatically in a high elm; here andthere a rabbit popped out and sat up, the picture of precociouscuriosity. Nature seemed to be standing in her doorway for a carelesshalf-hour's gossip, before putting up the shutters to bar the robberswho would soon be about their work of the night.
It was still quite light as I strolled back over the Common, and I chosea path that took me through a little spinney of ash, oak, and beech,treading carefully to avoid crushing the tender crosiers of bracken thatwere just beginning to break their way through the soil.
As I emerged from the little clump of wood, I saw two figures going awayfrom me in the direction of Pym.
One was that of a boy wearing a cricket-cap; he was walkingdeliberately, his hands hanging at his sides; the other figure was ataller boy, and he threw out his legs in a curious, undisciplined way,as though he had little control over them. At first sight I thought hewas not sober.
The two passed out of sight behind a clump of hawthorn, but once I sawthe smaller figure turn and face the other, and once he made a repellinggesture with his hands.
It occurred to me that the smaller boy was trying to avoid hiscompanion; that he was, in one sense, running away from him, that hewalked as one might walk away from some threatening animal,deliberately--to simulate the appearance of courage.
I fancied the bigger boy was the idiot Harrison I had seen thatafternoon, and Farmer Bates's "We hoped we were shut of him" recurred tome. I wondered if the idiot were dangerous or only a nuisance.
I took the smaller boy to be one of the villagers' children. I noticedthat his cricket-ca
p had a dark patch as though it had been mended withsome other material.
The impression which I received from this trivial affair was one ofdisappointment. The wood and the Common had been so deserted byhumanity, so given up to nature, that I felt the presence of the idiotto be a most distasteful intrusion. "If that horrible thing is going tohaunt the Common there will be no peace or decency," was the idea thatpresented itself. "I must send him off, the brute," was the corollary.But I disliked the thought of being obliged to drive him away.
VI
The next morning I did not go on the Common; I was anxious to avoid ameeting with the Harrison idiot. I had been debating whether I shoulddrive him away if I met him. Obviously I had no more right on the Commonthan he had--on the other hand, he was a nuisance, and I did not see whyI should allow him to spoil all my pleasure in that ideal stretch ofwild land which pressed on three sides of the Wood Farm. It was a stupidquandary of my own making; but I am afraid it was rather typical of mymental attitude. I am prone to set myself tasks, such as this evictionof the idiot from common ground, and equally prone to avoid them by aprocess of procrastination.
By way of evasion I walked over to Deane Hill and surveyed the wonderfulpanorama of neat country that fills the basin between the Hampden andthe Quainton Hills. Seen from that height, it has something the effectof a Dutch landscape, it all looks so amazingly tidy. Away to the left Ilooked over Stoke-Underhill. Ailesworth was a blur in the hollow, but Icould distinguish the high fence of the County Ground.
I sat all the morning on Deane Hill, musing and smoking, thinking ofsuch things as Ginger Stott, and the match with Surrey. I decided that Imust certainly go and see Stott's queer son, the phenomenon who had,they say, read all the books in Mr. Challis's library. I wondered whatsort of a library this Challis had, and who he was. I had never heard ofhim before. I think I must have gone to sleep for a time.
When Mrs. Berridge came to clear away my dinner--I dined, without shame,at half-past twelve--I detained her with conversation. Presently I askedabout little Stott.
"He's a queer one, that's what he is," said Mrs. Berridge. She was aneat, comely little woman, rather superior to her station, and it seemedto me, certainly superior to her clod of a husband.
"A great reader, Farmer Bates tells me," I said.
Mrs. Berridge passed that by. "His mother's in trouble about him thismorning," she said. "She's such a nice, respectable woman, and has allher milk and eggs and butter off of us. She was here this morning whileyou were out, sir, and, what I could make of it that 'Arrison boy hadbeen chasing her boy on the Common last night."
"Oh!" I said with sudden enlightenment. "I believe I saw them." At theback of my mind I was struggling desperately with a vague remembrance.It may sound incredible, but I had only the dimmest memory of my laterexperience of the child. The train incident was still fresh in my mind,but I could not remember what Stott had told me when I talked with himby the pond. I seemed to have an impression that the child had somestrange power of keeping people at a distance; or was I mixing upreality with some Scandinavian fairy tale?
"Very likely, sir," Mrs. Berridge went on. "What upset Mrs. Stott wasthat her boy's never upset by anything--he has a curious way of lookingat you, sir, that makes you wish you wasn't there; but from what Mrs.Stott says, this 'Arrison boy wasn't to be drove off, anyhow, and herson came in quite flurried like. Mrs. Stott seemed quite put out aboutit."
Doubtless I might have had more information from my landlady, but I wasstruggling to reconstruct that old experience which had slipped awayfrom me, and I nodded and turned back to the book I had been pretendingto read. Mrs. Berridge was one of those unusual women--for her stationin life--who know when to be silent, and she finished her clearing awaywithout initiating any further remarks.
When she had finished I went out onto the Common and looked for the pondwhere I had talked with Ginger Stott.
I found it after a time, and then I began to gather up the threads I haddropped.
It all came back to me, little by little. I remembered that talk I hadhad with him, his very gestures; I remembered how he had spoken ofhabits, or the necessity for the lack of them, and that took me back tothe scene in the British Museum Reading Room, and to my theory. I wassuddenly alive to that old interest again.
I got up and walked eagerly in the direction of Mrs. Stott's cottage.