Chapter VIII (6)

I hope Harrogate is having the desired effect upon you. I was
about to say that you have missed few events of any value
or interest during your absence, but I feel I must qualify
that statement. You have missed a golden moment. The great
Baldwin evening has come and gone and I deplore the fact that
you were not there. My sense of gratification, however, is
not due to Ephraim himself but to my unpopular protégé and
white elephant--Alfred Codling. I tell you it was glorious!
Ephraim spoke for an hour and a half, the usual thing, a
dull _réchauffée_ of Schopenhauer and Hegel, droning forth
platitudes and half-baked sophistries. When it was finished
the chairman asked if anyone else wished to speak. To my
amazement my ex-lance-corporal rose heavily to his feet. His
face was brick red and his eyes glowed with anger. He pointed
his big fingers at Ephraim and exclaimed: “Yes, talk, talk,
talk--that’s all it is. There’s nothing in it at all!” and
he hobbled out of the room (you know he was wounded in the
right foot). The position, as you may imagine, was a little
trying. I did not feel in the mood to stay and make apologies.
I hurried after Codling. I caught him up at the end of the
lane. I said, “Codling, why did you do that?” He could not
speak for a long time, then he said: “I’m sorry, sir. It came
over me like, all of a sudden.” We walked on. At the corner
by Harvey’s mill we met a girl. Her face was wet--there was a
fine rain pouring at the time. They looked at each other these
two, then she suddenly threw out her arms and buried her face
on his chest. I realized that this was no place for me and
I hurried on. The following morning I received the enclosed
letter. Please return it to me.

Yours ever,
JAMES.

ALFRED CODLING TO JAMES WEEKES

DEAR SIR,

Please to irrase my name from the littery soc. I feel I have
treated you bad about it but there it is. I apologize to you
for treatin you bad like this that is all I regret You have
always been kind and pleesant to me lendin me the books and
that. I shall always be grateful to you for what you have
done. It all came over me sudden like last night while that
chap was spoutin out about what you call _physology_. I had
never heard tell on the word till you put me on to it and now
they all talk about it. I looked it up in the diction and it
says somethin about the science of mind and that chap went
on spoutin about it. I had quarrel with my girl we had nevver
quarrel before and I was very down abowt it. She is the best
girl a feller could wish and I have always said so. Somehow
last night while he was spoutin on it came over me sudden I
thowt of the nights I had spent alone in the dessert when it
was all quite and missterous and big. I had been throw it
all sir. I had seen my pals what was alive one minnit blown
to peices the next. I had tramped hundreds of miles and gone
without food and watter. I had seen hell itsel sir And when
you are always with death like that sir you are always so much
alive You are alive and then the next minnit you may be dead
and it makes you want to feel in touch like with everythin
You cant hate noone when you like that You think of the other
feller over there whose thinkin like you are prehaps and he
all alone to lookin up the blinkin stars and it comes over
you that its only love that holds us all together love and
nothin else at all My hart was breakin thinkin of Annie what
I had treated so bad and what I had been throw and he went on
spoutin and spoutin What does he know about _physology_ You
have to had been very near death to find the big things thats
what I found out and I couldnt tell these littery blokes that
thats why I lost my temper and so please to irrase me from the
soc They cant teach me nothen that matters I’ve seen it all
and I cant teach them nothen because they havent been throw
it What I have larnt is sir that theres somethin big in our
lives apart from getting on and comfits and good times and so
sir I am much oblidged for all you done for me and except my
appology for the way I treat you

Your obedient servant,
ALFRED CODLING.

JAMES WEEKES TO EDWIN JOPE

DEAR JOPE,

In reply to your letter, I cannot see my way to apologize or
even dissociate myself with the views expressed by Mr. Alfred
Codling at our last meeting, consequently I must ask you to
accept my resignation.

Yours very truly,
JAMES WEEKES.

SAMUEL CHILDERS TO EDWIN JOPE

DEAR JOPE,

Taking into consideration all the circumstances of the case,
I must ask you to accept my resignation from the Tibbelsford
Literary Society.

Yours faithfully,
S. CHILDERS.

ANNIE PHELPS TO ALFRED CODLING

MY DEAR ALF,

Of course its all right. I am all right now dear Alf I will
try and be a good wife to you I amnt clever like you with all
your big thowts and that but I will and be a good wife to you
Aunt Em is goin to give us that horses-hair and mother says
therell be tweanty-five pounds comin to me when Uncle Steve
pegs out and he has the dropsie all right already What do you
say to Aperil if we can git that cottidge of Mrs. Plummers
mothers See you Sunday

love from
x x x x x x x x x x ANNIE.

EPHRAIM BALDWIN TO EDWIN JOPE

DEAR MR. JOPE,

As no apology has been forthcoming to me _from any quarter_
for the outrageous insult I was subjected to on the occasion
of my last paper, I must ask you to accept my resignation.

Yours faithfully,
EPHRAIM BALDWIN, O.B.E.

ALFRED CODLING TO ANNIE PHELPS

MY DEAR ANNE,

You will be please to hear they made me foreman this will mean
an increas and so on I think April; will be alright Mr. Weekes
sent me check for fifty pounds to start farnishin but I took
it back I said no I could not accep it havin done nothin to
earn it and treatin him so bad over that littery soc but he
said yes and he put it in such a way that I accep after all
so we shall be alright for farnishin at the present He was
very kind and he says we was to go to him at any time and I
was to go on readin the books he says I shall find good things
in them but not the littery soc he says he has left it hisself
I feel I treated him very bad but I could not stand that
feller spoutin and him nevver havin been throw it like what I
have That dog of Charly’s killed one of Mrs. Reeves chickens
Monday so must now close till Sunday with love from

Your soon husband (dont it sound funny?)
ALF.

EDWIN JOPE TO WALTER BUNNING

DEAR SIR,

In reply to your letter I beg to say that the Tibbelsford
Literary Society is dissolved.

Yours faithfully,
E. JOPE.

“FACE”

It will not, of course, surprise you to know that it was at the Cravenford National School that he was first known as “Face.” The people of Essex are well-known for their candour and lucidity of expression. He was an exceptionally--well, plain boy. There was nothing abnormal, or actually mal-formed about him, it was only that his features had that perambulatory character which is the antithesis of classic. It was what the Americans call a “homely” face. The proportions were all just wrong, the ears slightly protruding, the jaw too lantern, the eyes actually too wide apart. Moreover, his figure was clumsy in the extreme. He seemed all hands, and feet, and knees, and chin. It was impossible for him to pass any object without kicking it. Neither was his personality enhanced by his manner, which was taciturn and sullen, _gauche_ in the extreme. The games and amusements of other boys held no attractions for him. He made no friends, exchanged no confidences, distinguished himself at nothing. Yet those of the impatient world who found time to devote a second glance to this uncouth exterior were bound to be impressed by the appeal of those deep brown expectant eyes.

They were not essentially intelligent eyes, but they had a kind of breadth of sympathy, a profound watchfulness, like the eyes of some caged animal to whom the full functions of its being had not so far been revealed.

It was the universality of this nick-name, “Face,” which preserved it, for the boys of Cravenford National School knew that Caleb Fryatt resented it, and individually they feared him. That very clumsiness and imperviousness of his was apt to be overwhelming when adapted to militant purposes. Not that he was easy to rouse, but it was difficult to know when he was roused--he gave no outward manifestation of it--but when he was, it was difficult to get him to stop. He was a grim and merciless fighter, who could take punishment with a kind of morbid relish. It only inspired him to a more terrible onslaught. The boys preferred to attack him in company, and then usually vocally, by peeping over the churchyard wall and calling out:

“Face! Face! Oh, my! There’s a face!”

The tragic setting of his home life explained much. He had had a brother and two elder sisters, all of whom had died in infancy. He lived with his father and mother in a meagre dilapidated cottage a mile beyond the church. His father worked at a stud farm, at such moments as the mood for work was upon him. He was a man of morose and vicious temper, quickened by spasmodic outbreaks of alcoholic indulgence. Of poor physique, he was nevertheless a dangerous engine of destruction in these moods, particularly in respect to the frailer sex. Caleb had been brought up in a code which recognized unquestioningly the right of might, which accepted tears and blows as a natural concomitant to its reckoning. He had stood powerless and affrighted at the vision of his little mother beaten unreasonably almost to insensibility, and he had never heard her complain. His own body was scarred by the thousand attentions of sticks and belts. He, too, had not complained. In some dumb way he suffered more from the blows his mother received than he did from those he received himself.

But he was growing up now--ugly, clumsy old “Face.” When at the age of fourteen he passed through the first standard and out of the school, he was already as tall as his father, and somewhat thicker in girth, more agile, tougher in fibre. The significance of this development did not occur to him at the time. He was sent to work at Sam Hurds’, the blacksmith, a dour, intelligent, religious giant, who instructed him in the intricacies of his craft with relentless thoroughness, but without much sympathy. The boy liked the work, although he showed no great aptitude at it. He had a way of plodding on, appearing to understand, serving long hours, and then in a period of abstraction forgetting all that he had been told. He loved the blazing forge, the clang of metal upon metal, the sheen upon the carter’s horses that came in to be shod, the sunlight making patterns on the road outside....

He was two years with Sam Hurds. At seventeen his muscles were like a man’s. His overgrown, hulking body like a fully developed farm labourer’s. His appearance had not improved. Even the smith adopted the village nick-name and called him “Face.” At first it was “Young Face,” then “Face,” then as their sombre familiarity developed, and the smith realized the boy’s sound qualities and the something far too old for his years, it became “Old Face.” He knew that his assistant had no powers of adaptability, little invention, not a very real grasp of the essentials, but at the same time he knew he could trust him. He would do precisely as he was told. He would stick to it. He could be relied upon like a sheep dog. Nothing could shift him from his post of duty.

The smith was right, but he had not allowed for those outward thrusts of fate which upset the soberest plans.

One night Caleb arrived home and found his mother crying. He had never seen her cry before. He regarded her spell-bound.

“What is it, mother?”

“Nothing, lad, nothing. Come, your tea’s keeping warm upon the hob. There’s a pasty----”

“Nay, you wouldn’t cry for nowt, mother. Lift up your head.”

She lifted up her head and dashed the tears away, but as she moved toward the kitchen he noticed that she was trying to conceal a limp. He caught her up.

“He has been striking you again.”

“It’s nothing, lad.”

“Show me.”

He pulled her down to him and she wept again. Lifting the hem of her skirt, she revealed her leg above the ankle, bound up in linen.

“He kicked me, dear, but it is nothing. It will pass.”

Caleb ate his tea in silence. His table manners were never of the finest, and on this occasion he masticated his food, and swilled his tea, like an animal preoccupied with some disturbance of its normal life. Afterward he sat apart and thought, his mother busy with household matters. Later she popped across the road to a neighbouring cottage to borrow some ointment.

While she was out his father returned. It was getting dark, and a fine rain was beginning to fall. His father came stumbling up the cottage garden singing. Caleb blocked his passage in the little entrance hall, and said deliberately:

“You didn’t ought to have kicked mother.”

His father, emerging from the shock of surprise, scowled at him.

“What’s that?”

“You didn’t ought to have kicked mother.”

For a moment Stephen Fryatt was speechless, then he lurched forward and pushed his son away.

“What the devil’s it to do with you, whippersnapper?”

Caleb thrust his father back against the wall and repeated.

“You didn’t ought to have kicked her.”

Then Stephen saw red. He struck at his son with his clenched hand, and the blow split the boy’s ear. Caleb took his father by the throat and shook him. The latter tried to bring his knee into play. At this foul method of attack, Caleb, too, became angry. Those long powerful fingers gripped tighter. He closed up, and flung his father’s body against the lintel of the door. He did not realize his own newly developed strength. When his mother returned a little later she found her man lying in the passage with the back of his head in a pool of blood, her son hovering ghost-like in the background. She gave a cry:

“What’s this ye’ve done, Caleb?”

A hollow voice came out of the darkness:

“He didn’t ought to have kicked ye, mother.”

She screamed and, kneeling upon the floor, she supported the battered head upon her knee. It appeared an unrecognizable thing, the hair so much blacker in the ivory-hued face, the eyes staring stupidly.

Followed then a shifting phantasmagoria, scenes and emotions incomprehensible to the defender. Neighbours, and doctors and policemen, talking and arguing, whispering together, pointing at him. He was led away. In all that early turmoil, and in the more bewildering proceedings which followed, the one thing which impressed him deeply was the attitude of his mother. She had changed toward him entirely. She accused him, reviled him, even cursed him. He would ponder upon this in his dark cell at night. He had never imagined that his mother could have loved his father--not in that way, not to that extent. His brown ox-like eyes tried to penetrate the darkness for some solution. He had no fear as to what they would do with him, but everything was inexplicable ... unsatisfying. The days and weeks which followed--he lost all sense of time--added to the sense of mystification. He appeared to be passed from one judge to another, beginning with a gentleman in a tweed suit and knickerbockers, and ending with a very old man in a white wig and gold-rimmed glasses, of whom only the head and the thin pale fingers seemed visible. Yes, yes, why did they keep on torturing him like this? He had answered all the questions again and again, always giving the same replies, always ending up with the solemn asseveration:

“He didn’t ought to have kicked her.”

At the same time he had never meant to kill his father. He had under-estimated his strength. He had become very strong in the forge. His father had attacked him first. It was unfortunate that the back of Mr. Fryatt’s head had struck the sharp corner of the lintel post. He was in any case crazy with drink. The boy was only seventeen. He believed he was defending his mother. Of course, these pleas were not his. This version of the case had not occurred to him, but to his surprise a learned-looking gentleman, who had visited him in his cell, had stood up in Court and made them vehemently. And hearing the case put like that Caleb nodded his head. He hadn’t thought of it in that light, but it was quite true. Oh, but the arguments which ensued! The long words and phrases, the delays, and pomp and uncertainty. Never once did the question seem to come up as to whether his father “ought to have done it,” or not. According to his mother his father appeared to have been almost a paragon of a father.

It was all settled at last, and he was sent away to a “Home” for two years.

Home! The ironic travesty of the word penetrated his thick skull immediately he had passed what looked like a prison gate. There were two hundred boys in this home. It seemed strange to live in a home ruled over by a governor in uniform, policed by gaolers and superintendents. Strange to have a home one could not leave at will, where iron discipline turned one out at dawn, drove one like a slave to long hours of hard and uncongenial work. Strange that home should breathe bitterness and distrust, that it should be under a code which seemed to repeat eternally:

“Don’t forget you are a criminal. Young as yet, but the taint is in you!”

It was true there were momentary relaxations, football and other games which he detested, bleak and interminable services in a chapel, organ recitals and concerts. The other boys disgusted him with their endless obscenities and suggestions, their universal conviction that the great thing was to “get through it,” so as to be able to resume those criminal practices inherent in them, practices which the home did nothing to eradicate or relieve.

If “Old Face” had not been of the toughest fibre, dull witted, impervious, and in a sense unawakened, those two years would have broken him. As it was they dulled his sensibilities even more, they embittered him. Those brown eyes had almost lost that straining glance of expectancy, as though the home had taught him that there was nothing for him in any case to expect. He was a criminal, hallmarked for eternity. When he had been there six months they sent for him to go and visit the chaplain. That good man looked very impressive, and announced that the governor had received information that Caleb’s mother was dead, and that it was his solemn duty to break the news to him. He appeared relieved that the boy did not at once burst into tears. He then delivered a little homily on life and death, and pointed out that it was Caleb’s evil and vicious actions which had hastened his mother’s death. He advised him to pour out his heart in penitence to God, who was always our Rock and Saviour in times of tribulation. He quoted passages from Leviticus, and Caleb stared at him dully, thinking the while:

“I’ll never see my mother again, never, never.”

He did not give way to grief. The news only bewildered him the more. He went about his duties in the home stolidly. He was quite an exemplary inmate, hardly up to the average standard of quickness and intelligence, but quiet, obedient, and well behaved. At the end of his term of service he was sent up before the governor and other officials. The clumsy scrawl of his signature was demanded upon innumerable forms. He believed he was once more to be a free man. And so he was in a qualified sense. But he was not to escape without the seal of the institution being indelibly stamped upon him. In round-about phrases the governor explained that he was to leave the home, but he was not to imagine that he was a free agent to go about the world murdering whomever he liked. He was still a criminal, requiring supervision and watching. Out of their Christian charity the governors had found employment for him at a timber merchant’s at Bristol. Thither he would go, but he must remember that he was still under their protection. Every few weeks he must report to the police. Any act of disobedience on his part would be treated--well, by a sterner authority. On the next occasion he would not be sent to a nice comfortable establishment like the home, where they played football and had concerts, but to Wormwood Scrubbs or Dartmoor. Did he understand? Oh, yes, Caleb understood--at least, partly. He was to be free, free in a queer way.

The arrangement did not exactly tally with his sense of freedom, any more than this building tallied with his idea of home, but he was only nineteen and his body was strong and his spirit not completely broken. Any ideas he may have entertained that the new life was going to spell freedom in any sense were quickly shattered. The timber merchant at Bristol was a man named Barnet, a tyrant of the worst description. He knew the kind of material he was handling. Most of his employees were ex-convicts, ticket-of-leave-men, Lascars, or social derelicts. He acted accordingly. Caleb slept in a shed with nine other men, four of whom were coloured. They worked ten hours a day loading timber on barges. They were given greasy cocoa and bread at six o’clock in the morning, a meal of potatoes and little square lumps of hard meat at twelve, then tea and bread at four o’clock in the afternoon. In addition to this he was paid twelve shillings a week. The slightest act of insubordination or slackness was met with the threat:

“Here, you! Any more of that and you go back to where you came from!”

Before he had been there a month he felt that the home was indeed a home in comparison. Strangely enough, it was one of the coloured men who rescued him from his thraldom, a pleasant voiced coon with only one eye. He appeared to take a fancy to Caleb. One night he came to him and whispered:

“Say, boss, would you like to beat it?”

It took some time for the boy from Cravenford to understand the coloured man’s phraseology and plan, but when he did, he fell in with it with alacrity. The following Saturday they visited a little public-house down by the docks and were there introduced to a grizzled mate. Hands were wanted on a merchantman sailing for Buenos Ayres the following week. The coloured man was a free agent and he signed on, and Caleb signed on in the name of J. Bullock. Two nights before sailing he hid in a barge and joined his ship the following morning. All day long he experienced the tremors of dread for the first time in his life. The primitive instinct of escape and the call of the sea was upon him. He could have danced with joy when he heard the rattling of the chains, and the hoarse cries of the deck hands as the big ship got under way at dusk.

The voyage to Buenos Ayres was uneventful. The work was hard and the discipline severe, but he was conscious all the time of sensing the first draught of freedom that he had experienced since he left his village. This feeling was accentuated at port when he realized that after being paid off, he was free to leave the ship. But the rigid magnificence of Buenos Ayres depressed him. He learnt that after unloading they were to refit and convey cattle to Durban in South Africa, so he signed on again for the next voyage. This proved to be a formidable experience. A week out they ran into very heavy seas. He was detailed to attend the cattle. The cattle superintendent was a drunken bully. The stench among the cattle pens, added to the violent heaving of the ship, brought on sickness, but he was not allowed any respite. The cattle themselves were seasick, and many of them died and had to be thrown overboard. The voyage lasted three weeks, and when he arrived at Durban he determined to try his luck once more as a landsman. At that time there was plenty of demand for unskilled labour for men of Caleb’s physique in South Africa, but it was poorly paid. He drifted about the country doing odd jobs. He visited Cape Town, Kimberly and Pietermaritzburg. The fever of _wanderlust_ was upon him. He never remained in one situation for more than a few months. He was the man who desired to see over the ridge. Perhaps further, just a little further, would be--he knew not what, some answer to the inexpressible yearning within him, deep calling unto deep. At the age of twenty-two he was working on the railroad near Nyanza. They came and told him about the great war, which had just started in Europe. A keen-faced little man, one of the gangers, tapped him on the shoulder and said:

“It’s lucky for you lad you’re out here. Otherwise they’d be telling you that ‘your king and country need you’.”

The phrase disturbed him. Night after night he lay awake dreaming of England. Memories of the home and of the timber-merchant at Bristol vanished. He thought only of Cravenford, the gray ivy-coloured church, the rambling high street, the pond by Mr. Larry’s farm, the cross-roads where he and another boy named Stoddard had fought one April afternoon, his mother’s cottage, now, alas! deserted, but always sacred, old Sam Hurds banging away in the smithy, the rooks circling above the great elms in the park--all, all these things were perhaps in danger whilst he lay sulking in a foreign land. They had called him “Face.” Well, why not? He knew he was not particularly pre-possessing. The fellow workmen had always been at great pains to point this out to him. But still--stolidly and indifferently he went about his work, and then one day in the old manner he vanished....

We will not attempt to record Caleb’s experiences of the war. He had no difficulty in joining a volunteer unit in Capetown, which was drafted to England. There he asked to be transferred to one of his own county regiments. The request was overlooked in the clamour of those days. He found himself with a cockney infantry regiment, and he remained with it through the whole course of the war. His life was identical to that of his many million comrades. In some respects he seemed to enjoy lapses of greater freedom than he had experienced for a long time. He was better fed, better clothed, better looked after. He had money in his pocket which he knew not what to do with. He made a good soldier, doing unquestioningly what he was told, sticking grimly to his post, being completely indifferent to danger.

Save for a few months on the Italian front, he served the whole time in France. He was slightly wounded three times, and in 1917 was awarded a military cross for an astounding feat of bravery in bombing a German dug-out and killing five of the enemy single-handed in the dark. Those queer spiritual strivings so deep down in his nature derived no satisfaction from the war. It was all quite meaningless and incomprehensible. When he left South Africa he had an idea that the fighting would be in England. He visualized grim battles in the fields beyond Cravenford, and he and the other boys from the school defending their village. He had never conceived that a war could be like this. Sometimes he would lie awake at night and ruminate vaguely upon the queer perversity of fate which suddenly made murder popular. He had been turned out of England because he had quite inadvertently killed his father for kicking his mother across the shins, and now he was praised for killing five men within a few minutes. He didn’t know, of course, but perhaps some of those men--particularly that elderly plump man who coughed absurdly as he ran on to Caleb’s bayonet--perhaps they were better men than his father, although foreigners, although enemy. It was very perplexing....

After a gray eternity of time, the thing came to an end. He found himself back in England. During the war much had been forgotten and forgiven. No one asked him for his credentials. The police never interfered with him. With his three wound stripes, his military cross, and his papers all in order, he was for a time a _persona grata_.

He had a bonus beyond the pay which he had saved, and he had never been so wealthy in his life. He stayed in London, and tried to adapt himself to a life of luxury and freedom, but he was not happy. In restaurants he was self-conscious, in theatres bored, in the streets bewildered. And so one day he set out and returned to his native village. Strangely, little had it altered! There was the church, the smithy, and the old street all just the same. He called on the smith, who was startled at the sight of him, but on perceiving his stripes and ribbons, reasonably polite. He ransacked the village for old friends. Alas! How many of his school associates had gone, never to return. He called on Mr. Green, the miller, Mrs. Allport, at the general shop, Bob Canning, the carrier. Oh, dear me! yes, they all remembered him, were quite courteous, glad he had done well at the war, got through safely. Well, well! And soon the story got round. “Old Face has returned. Old Face! The boy who murdered his father!”

The novelty of his re-appearance and return soon wore off, and he knew that he was held in distrust in the village. He wandered far afield, and eventually obtained employment at a brick-works at Keeble, four miles down the valley toward Blaizing-Killstoke. Here the rumours concerning him gradually percolated, but they carried little weight or significance. He was a good workman, and time subdues all things.

Then the strangest miracle happened to Caleb Fryatt. He was nearly thirty, hard-bitten, battered, ill-mannered, with a scar from a bullet on his left cheek, little money, no prospects and no ambition--an unattractive chunk of a man. But what should we all do if love itself were not the greatest miracle of all? Anne Tillie was by no means a beauty herself, but she was not without attraction. She had a round, bright red ingenuous face, a heavily built figure with rather high shoulders and long arms. She was a year older than Caleb and inclined to be deaf, but there was a transparent honesty and simplicity about her. One could see that she would be honest, loyal, and true to all her purposes. She was the daughter of the postman at Blaizing-Killstoke. She and Caleb used to meet in the evenings and wander the lanes together. They did not appear to converse very much, but they would occasionally laugh, and give each other a hearty push. To her father’s disgust, these attentions led to marriage the following year. They went to live in a tiny cottage on the outskirts of Keeble, ten minutes’ bicycle ride from the works. Anne made an excellent wife. She seemed to understand and adapt herself to her husband’s idiosyncrasies. She kept the cottage spotlessly clean, tended his clothes, and kept him in clean linen, cooked well, and studied all his little wants and peculiarities. She found time to attend to the garden, grow her own vegetables, and even see after a dozen fowls.

Caleb had never enjoyed such material comfort. In the evening they would sit either side of the fire, he with his pipe and she with her sewing. They were an unusually silent couple. Apart from her deafness, they never seemed prompted to exchange more than cursory remarks about the weather, their food, or some matter of local gossip. In the summer they sat in the garden, and watching the blue smoke from his pipe curl away into the amber light of the setting sun, Caleb felt that he had reached a haven after a restless storm. He worked remorsely hard at the brick-works, and in two years’ time was made a kiln foreman, receiving good wages. Malevolent people still whispered the story concerning the boy who murdered his father, and pointed an accusing finger at the back of his bulky form, but no one dared to remind Anne of that tragic happening. She knew the full details of it quite well, and woe to any unfortunate individual who dared to suggest that her man was in the wrong! In course of time he built a barn, and a toolshed, and they bought an adjoining orchard. They kept pigs, and then a pony and trap, and on Thursdays Anne would drive to market, and sell eggs, and chickens and apples. Oh, yes, they were becoming a prosperous pair. Caleb had surely outlived the ugly vicissitudes of his fate. Was he happy? Was he completely satisfied? Who shall say? The promptings from the soul come from some deep root no one has fathomed. He was conscious of a greater peace than he had ever known. He sometimes hummed a quite unrecognizable tune as he went about his work. The mornings enchanted him with gossamer webs gleaming with dew, swinging between the flowers. But the eyes still sometimes appeared to be seeking--one knows not what.

They had been married five years and seven months when the child was born. It came as a great surprise to Caleb. He had hardly dared to visualize such an eventuality. What a to-do there was in the cottage! Another room to be prepared, strange garments suddenly appearing upon the line in the kitchen, a visiting nurse somewhat important and discursive.

“A boy! Ho!” thought Caleb, as he trundled along on his bicycle the following morning. A boy who would grow up and perhaps become like himself. Well, that was very strange, very remarkable. Most remarkable that such a possibility had never occurred to him. All day long, and for nights and weeks after he thought about the boy who was going one day to be a man like himself. The thought at first worried and perplexed him. Was he--had he been--the kind of man the world would want perpetuated? He felt the fierce censure and distrust mankind had always lavished upon himself beginning to focus upon the boy, and gradually the protective sense developed in him to a desperate degree. The boy should have better chances than he ever had, the boy should be protected, cared for, shown the way of things.... Caleb ruminated. His wife became very dear to him. He was a man on the threshold of revelation. But before his eyes had fully opened to the complete realization of all that this meant to him, a wayward gust of fever shattered the spectrum. The little fellow died when barely four months old. For a time Caleb was most deeply concerned for the health of his wife, who was a victim of the same scourge, but, as she gradually recovered, a feeling of unendurable melancholy crept over him. He began to observe the gray perspective of his life, its past and future. When Anne was once more normal, their intercourse became more taciturn than ever. There fell between them long, empty silences. There were times when he regarded her with boredom, almost with aversion. The years would roll on ... wander-spirit would assail him. He would be tempted to pick up his cap and go forth and seek some port, where a ship under ballast might be preparing to essay the vast insecurity of heaving waters. But something told him that that would be cruel. His wife’s love for him was the most moving experience of his life, far greater than his love for her. She was middle-aged now, and her deafness was more pronounced than ever.

Once she went away to stay with her father for a few days. The morning after she left, a wall in the brickyard collapsed and crushed his right foot. He was carried home in excruciating pain. A neighbour came in and attended him and they fetched the doctor. They wanted to send for his wife but he told them not to bother her. All night he was delirious, and for the next two days and nights he went through a period of torment. As the fever abated a deep feeling of depression crept over him. He began to yearn for his wife profoundly. The neighbour, an elderly woman, wife of the local corn-chandler, was kindness itself. But everything she did was just wrong. How could she know the way Caleb liked things, and he lying there silent and uncomplaining?

On the third evening Anne arrived. She had heard the news. She came bustling into the cottage, dropped her bag, pressed her lips to his.

“Silly Billy, why didn’t you send for me?”

Silly Billy! That was her favourite term of raillery when he had behaved foolishly.

He choked back a desire to cry with relief.

“It’s nothing, nothing to bother about.”

But a feeling of deep contentment crept over him. His eyes regarded her thick plump figure moving busily but quietly about the room. There would be nothing now to disturb or annoy him. Everything would be done just--just as he liked it. She deftly re-arranged the positions of tables, and cups, and curtains. As the evening wore on she hovered above him, watching his every little movement, like a tigress watching over its cub. She eased the pillow, stroked his hair, and by some adroit manœuvre relieved the pressure on his throbbing leg. A deep sense of tranquillity permeated him. For the first time for three days he felt the desire to sleep, the cottage seemed so inordinately quiet, secure. Once when she was stooping near the chair by the bed, he seized her rough, strong forearm and pulled her to him. He believed he slept at last with her cheeks pressed against his own....

They treated him very well at the brick-works, and his wages were paid every week during his absence. It was nearly two months before he could get about again, and the doctors said he must expect to have a permanent limp. Summer vanished in the October mists, and a long winter dragged through its course. Spring again. Its pulse a little feebler than in the old days? Well, well, what could a man expect? Some of the old desires raised their heads and tugged at his heart-strings. He was very happy--off and on a little soiled, perhaps, by the stress of bitter years, a little more ordinary, a little more sociable. He sometimes visited “The Green Man” and would drink beer with Mr. White, the corn-chandler, and old Tom Smethwick. And after a glass or two he would be quite a social acquisition, and would be inclined to boast a little of his deeds in the Great War, and of his adventures in foreign lands. No harm in it. Not such a bad sort, Old Face, the boy who murdered his father.

Heigho! But how the years ravage us! ’Twas but a while when things were so and so, and now.... He was forty-four when two disturbing factors came into his life, threatening to wreck its calm tenor, and they occurred almost simultaneously. There was a girl at the brick-works who came from London. She was the manager’s secretary and she worked in his office. Oh, but she was a smart piece of goods, and the men never tired of discussing her. In the early twenties, distinctly pretty, with a mass of chestnut hair, pert manners and a wrist watch. Passing through the yards, she would sometimes chat with the men at the kilns, and in their dinner hour she would laugh and joke with them. Their estimate of her was not always expressed in very refined or flattering language. Old Ingleton, the time-keeper, swore she had given him the “glad-eye,” but as one of his own eyes was glass, his confession did not carry great weight. She had never singled Caleb out for any particular attention although she was always friendly with him. The cataclysm came upon him quite suddenly one day in late September. He was digging a trench by a mound covered with nettles, and a few tall sunflowers. It was a glorious day and the earth smelt good. He rested on his spade and was enjoying the pleasant tranquillity of the scene, when the girl came round the corner and looked at him. She smiled and exclaimed:

“A lovely day, Mr. Fryatt!”

He instinctively touched his hat and said “Ay.”

And that was the end of the conversation. But Caleb watched her walking up the narrow path toward the manager’s shanty, and some restless fever stirred within him. She was unique. He had seen such women from a distance, smartly apparelled, walking about the streets of London and Capetown, but he had always looked upon them as creatures of a different world from his own, and hardly given them a thought. But here was one smiling at him, speaking to him. After all, she was not so remote. She was a girl, indeed, a working girl, quite accessible and friendly. And what a lithesome, dainty figure! What an appealing pretty face! Those lips! Ugh! A large worm wriggled free from the side of the little trench, and quite unreasonably he cut it in half with his spade.

From that moment forward Caleb began to think of Agnes Fareham. Alas! He began to dream about her also. She was a note of bright and vivid colour in the drab monotony of his life. He began to lie in wait for her, to force his clumsy attentions upon her and she did not seem to resent it unduly. The affair became an obsession. His faculty for reasoning had never been considerable. In some dim way he felt that there was the solution of all those buried yearnings and thwarted desires which had accompanied him through life. Here was an explanation. He was content to be held by the experience, without formulating any plan or definite resolution. Whether the girl would ultimately succumb to his solicitations, whether she would go away with him, and if so how he was to manage to keep her; moreover, how he was to face the appalling cruelty of his own attitude toward Anne--all these questions he put behind him. For the moment they appeared immaterial to the blinding obsession. One day while still in this indeterminate mood he went home as usual to his mid-day dinner. As he dismounted his bicycle and leant it against the garden fence, Anne came out of the cottage and said:

“Caleb, there’s a gentleman to see you.”

He went inside and beheld a small keen-faced elderly man, who nodded to him and said:

“Mr. Caleb Fryatt?”

“Ay.”

The little man examined him closely.

“I will come straight to the business I have in hand. I am the head clerk of Rogers, Mason and Freeman, solicitors of Blaizing-Killstoke. You, I believe, are the only child of Stephen and Mary Fryatt, late of Cravenford?”

“Ay.”

“You may be aware that your father had a brother, named Leonard, in Nova Scotia?”

“I’ve heard tell on ’ee.”

“Your uncle died last year. He left a little property and no will. My principals are of opinion that you are the lawful legatee. They would be obliged if you would pay them a visit so that the matter may be fully determined. Here is my card.”

Caleb stared dully at the piece of pasteboard, but Anne who had entered the cottage just previously, asked to have the business explained to her. Caleb shouted in her ear. Then she turned to the lawyer and said:

“And how much money did his Uncle Leonard leave? Do you know, sir?”

“Quite without prejudice, and entirely between ourselves, I believe it is a matter of approximately four thousand pounds.”

It took the whole of the afternoon for this news thoroughly to penetrate the skull of the fortunate legatee. Indeed, it was not till he had had a pint of beer at “The Green Man” on the way home that the full significance came home to him. It is to be regretted that after his supper he returned to “The Green Man,” and for the first time in his life Mr. Caleb Fryatt got drunk. He stood drinks lavishly and indiscriminately. He told everyone his news. The amount became a little distorted. It may have been due to the lawyer’s use of the word “approximately.” This orgy acted upon him disastrously. As he reeled up the village street, only one vision became clear to him. Agnes! He could take her away, buy her a mansion and smart frocks. He could take her to hotels and theatres in London. At the same time, he could settle money on Anne. He was a millionaire. The world belonged to him. With a tremendous effort he controlled his feet and voice when he reached the cottage, but he went to bed at once. In the morning he had a headache and Anne bound his head in damp linen handkerchiefs and brought him tea.

By Monday everyone on the countryside from Cravenford to Billows Weir knew that “Old Face,” the ugly man, known as the boy who murdered his father, had come in for a huge fortune left by an uncle in Canada. The first person he met in the brick-works on Monday was Agnes, who came up to him and held out her hand:

“I believe we are to congratulate you, Mr. Fryatt.”

He smiled at her foolishly and held her hand an unnecessarily long time. There was no doubt she had taken to him. She liked him. Could he stir her deeper emotion?

The weeks went by in a dream. He visited the lawyers. Everything was in order. They even offered to advance him money. He could not visualize the full dimensions of his fortune; neither had he the power to act upon it. He still went on at the brick-works and the cottage, listening to Anne’s sensible admonitions to invest the money in small amounts so as to have a nest egg for their old age. But he could not detach this miracle of wealth from the figure of Agnes. They had come together. They belonged to each other, fantastic phenomena jerking him violently out of the deep rut of his existence. One day he went into the town and bought a gold locket, set with blue stones. He gave four pounds ten for it. He waited for Agnes that evening and gave it to her. He had been in an agony as to whether she would accept it, but to his delight she received it with gratitude and thanked him bewitchingly. This seemed to bind her to him indissolubly. A few evenings later he met her in the lane. There was no one about. Without a word he took her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers. She gasped and spluttered:

“Oh, Mr. Fryatt, please ... no.”

But she wasn’t angry. Oh, no, not really angry--just provocative, more alluring than ever.... They met frequently after that, in secret disused corners of the brick-field, in the lanes at night. He bought her more presents, and one Saturday they went secretly to a fair at Molesham and only returned by the last train. The men naturally began to get wind of this illicit courtship, but as far as he knew no rumour had penetrated the deafness of Anne. He was drifting desperately beyond care in either respect. Two months of this intensive worship and the madness was upon him. He said:

“You must come with me. We will run away.”

“Where, Caleb?”

“We’ll go to London.”

“Where should we stay?”

“At swell hotels. We will have a carriage. I will buy frocks and jewels.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed.

“What about your wife?”

“I’ll make it all right. I’ll settle some money on her.”

But Agnes was not so easily won. Oh dear, no! There were tears and emotion. You see, she was only a young and innocent girl. Suppose he deserted her? What assurance had she? This scheming and plotting went on for weeks. At length they came to an agreement. Agnes would go to London with him if he would first settle a thousand pounds upon her. It was very cheap at the price, and a fair and reasonable bargain. One Saturday they journeyed together to his lawyers at Blaizing-Killstoke. The deed was drawn up, and they both signed various papers. The elopement was fixed for the following Saturday. All the week Caleb walked like a man unconscious of his surroundings. The purposes of his life were to be fulfilled. True, he had odd moments of misgiving. He dared not think about Anne. Also at times he had gloomy forebodings concerning London hotels, how to behave, whether the people would laugh at him, what clothes to wear, whether Agnes would quickly sicken of him. But still he had pledged himself. He jingled the money in his pocket.... His destiny.

Friday was a disastrous day. It was cold and damp, and to his disgust he awoke with a severe twinge of rheumatism in his left shoulder. It made him irritable and nervous all day. Agnes was very preoccupied. He had advanced her some money to buy frocks, and she went backward and forward to her lodgings with large cardboard boxes. He had selected the morrow, because Anne was going away to spend a few days with her father. In the afternoon his rheumatism became worse, and he became aware of the symptoms of a feverish chill. He left off work at his usual time and cycled home. The cottage was all in darkness. He lighted the lamp. Anne had left his supper ready for him on the tray. The little room looked neat and tidy. She had also left a note for him. He picked it up carelessly and held it under the lamp. This is what he read:

Caleb dear, I hear that you have made some money over to Agnes
Fareham and that you are wishful to go away with her. My dear!
I do not want to interfere with your happiness. I thowt I had
been a good wife to you but you know best. I am goin to my
father and I shall not come back. Please God you may be happy.

Your broking hearted wife,

ANNE.

Bless you dear for all you have been to me and the happiness
you have give me.

And Caleb buried his face in his hands. Without touching his supper he carried the lamp into the bedroom and went to bed. Curse it! How his teeth were chattering! He would have liked a little brandy, but there was none in the cottage, and there was no one to go and fetch it. He wrapped himself up and rolled over, the interminable night began. What a weak fool he was! All the experiences and temptations of his life crowded upon him and tortured him. Idle dreams! Idle dreams! His shoulder ached insufferably. If Anne were here, she would rub it with that yellow oil. He could not rub his own shoulder and back. Then she would wrap it up in a thick shawl and say:

“Silly Billy, you must be careful of the damp.”

He could visualize her moving about the room, arranging the curtain so that there was no draught, stirring something in a cup, giving those little dexterous pokes to the bed clothes which meant so much, sitting placidly by the window, his coarse woollen socks in her hand. She loved darning his socks ... doing things for him, even all the unpleasant, ugly things of domestic life.