by Forrest Reid
Tom looked straight before him. ‘I suppose that depends on what you want to do. I should have thought there was plenty.’ The spaniel thrust his head against Tom’s shoulder, trying to attract further caresses, but Tom was not pleased.
‘Dingo his name is,’ Deverell went on. ‘He’s made friends with you already. Dogs always knows the right sort.’
‘The right sort for them, perhaps,’ said Tom ungraciously.
‘The right sort for them is the right sort.’
‘For you?’
‘Yes an’ for everybody. You ever had a pal, Mr. Tom?’
Tom did not answer. He was on the point of getting up to go home when it struck him that he was making a great deal of fuss about nothing—in fact behaving very much as he had behaved last night in the lane. What if Deverell had followed him? Was there any great sin in that? He remembered the way he himself had hung round after Eric in the mere hope of receiving some sign of friendliness.
‘You angry with me, Mr. Tom? I did follow you, but it wasn’t because I was spyin’ on you. I’d have joined you that time you whistled only I didn’t like—I didn’t know. I knowed it wasn’t me you was whistlin’ for.’
‘I’m not angry,’ said Tom.
‘Then why is it you won’t answer me?’
‘About having a pal? I don’t know what you mean by a pal.’
‘I mean what you mean.’
The question was indeed one Tom had often enough considered, and it recalled various attempted friendships—always abortive, always ending in disappointment, usually ending in regret that they had been attempted. ‘Well then, no,’ he said grumpily.
‘You wouldn’t be one, I’d think, to choose a pal just because he had fine clothes on him,’ Deverell continued.
‘Nor would I choose him just because he hadn’t,’ Tom replied.
Deverell was silent, and the spaniel, who had been nosing among the furze bushes, suddenly put up a couple of birds, which rose with a loud whirring noise.
‘Partridge,’ said Deverell.
Tom said nothing. Deverell probably knew all about birds and animals and plants. He would like to know about them too, and he took a sidelong glance at his companion. The young poacher puzzled him, although deep below the surface he had a secret understanding. And it was mixed up with that other feeling—not actually of distrust, but such as might have been awakened by the advances, say, of a friendly leopard, who should have strolled unexpectedly out of the jungle: Stranger still, this dubious element attracted him. He even had a desire to see the leopard put out his claws, hear the faint low growl at the back of his throat, see the yellow flame flickering in his eyes. All this was very wrong and inexplicable.
‘I suppose they bin’ giving me a bad character up at the house,’ Deverell presently muttered. ‘That’s what makes you unfriendly like.’
‘I’m not unfriendly,’ Tom protested. ‘As a matter of fact I never am—even when I want to be. I’ve been friendly with people I detested.’
Deverell listened, and then asked simply, ‘What they bin sayin’ about me?’
‘What makes you think they said anything? Why should they?’
‘Because I know they did. Sally Dempsey wouldn’t lose the chance. She as good as told me so this morning. She knows I come a bit of the way home with you last night. There’s one thing—she never seen me the worse for drink the way her oul’ lad is every Saturday night, and him a sexton of the church.’
‘Well, let’s talk of something else,’ said Tom. ‘It doesn’t matter what she says.’
‘It matters to me, Mr. Tom. What call has she to be taking away my character? There’s not much difference between characters if all was known.’
Tom shrugged his shoulders. This was the kind of thing he hated.
But his unresponsiveness seemed to embitter Deverell. ‘Yes, some’s hypocrites and some’s not—that’s the difference.’
‘Then you think everybody is equally good?’ said Tom coldly. ‘Or, I suppose, your real meaning is that they’re equally bad?’
Deverell did not answer, but his face darkened. He looked straight before him with sullen unhappy eyes. Then he muttered, ‘Perhaps you’d a’ got into trouble yourself, Mr. Tom, if you’d belonged to a different station of life.’
Tom flushed. ‘You don’t mean to say you think I was alluding to that!’ he exclaimed disgustedly. You must have a beautiful opinion of me!’
Deverell dug his heel into the grass, but his countenance was still clouded over.
‘Look here,’ Tom burst out. ‘I hate this kind of thing. It never leads to anything, but goes on and on for ever. Why are you so suspicious? I know you’ve been in jail, but I wasn’t thinking of that at all. I’d forgotten all about it. As a matter of fact I don’t care: not if it had happened fifty times. Also what you say about me is perfectly true: I might easily have got into trouble, as you call it: nothing is more likely. But I don t see why we should be talking in this way just as if I had accused you;
Deverell tore up a handful of grass. He put his arm round the spaniel, who sat between them with his tongue out and his eyes half shut, except when now and then he snapped at a fly.
‘You see, I took a likin” to you, Mr. Tom,’ he said rather shamefacedly.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘It was that made me follow you.’
‘I know. It was only because you hid I was cross.’
‘But I told you I didn’t like—’
‘You didn’t hide last night.’
‘I didn’t know who you was last night.’
‘Well, it’s all right now, isn’t it?’
Yes, it is, Mr. Tom… . Mr. Tom, I took a great likin’ to you.’
Tom did not answer, because there seemed to be nothing to say.
You like me to show you how to set snares for rabbits, Mr. Tom?’
Tom shook his head, and Deverell’s voice went on, close to his ear. ‘There’s plenty up there in the old magi—in your uncle’s woods. I wouldn’t say but I might find someone as would buy them from you too. Keep you nicely in pocket-money, Mr. Tom, not to mention the sport.’
Tom shook his head again.
‘A shilling each I might get for them, and there’d be no trouble in findin’ a score or two.
‘I couldn’t,’ said Tom. ‘I hate killing things. Anyhow, I never heard putting down traps called sport before; most people think it rather beastly.’
‘But rabbits has to be kept down, Mr. Tom, without you want them to be overrunnin’ everything.’
‘Well, I’m not going to keep them down.’
‘Perhaps you’d fish, then? I know a place where you might kill a trout or two.’
‘I bought a fishing-line this morning.’
‘Well, if you’d kill a fish, why wouldn’t you kill a rabbit or a hare?’
‘I don’t know… . I don’t believe I’d care for fishing either.’
‘You just think it over and I’ll meet you any time. There’s no harm in it.’
‘The more I think it over the less likely I’ll be to do it.’
‘But if there’s no harm—’
‘I know you think there isn’t; and it’s not that I’m thinking of either. It’s really only because I like these things. There was a frog I was looking at before you came. Well, I liked it; it seemed to me a lovely thing—now, do you see?’
Deverell appeared to be wrestling with a point of view which remained incomprehensible.
‘Hang it all,’ exclaimed Tom impatiently. ‘I don’t see why you can’t at least understand it. I understand you. Besides, you must have felt sometimes like that yourself. You say you like me, and I suppose that means you don’t want to hurt me.’
‘No, I wouldn’t hurt you, Mr. Tom, nor let anyone else hurt you.’
‘Well, there you are then: it’s just the same.’
‘No; it’s different.’
‘Why is it different? There isn’t any difference. The feeling you have is exactly the
same.’
‘No, it isn’t.
‘But it is. I mean, the feeling itself is. The only difference is that I’m a boy and the other animals are frogs and rabbits and hares.’
‘It’s not the same.’
Tom’s forehead wrinkled. He thought it over once more. ‘At any rate it’s partly the same,’ he concluded. ‘I know it’s not all the same, but there’s a great deal of it the same.’
‘But you can’t be fond of everything, Mr. Tom.’
‘No, Tom admitted, ‘I’m not. These are some insects I’m not fond of Still, I don’t think there’s any advantage in that. I don’t object to wasps, for instance, and it must be much pleasanter to be that way than to jump every time one comes near you.’
The young poacher was now smiling at him. He looked wonderfully different. All the darkness and sullenness had passed from his face. He looked quite happy.
‘I think, you know, I ought to go back soon,’ Tom said. ‘I’ve been out nearly all day.’
‘It’s early yet; you’ve plenty of time.’
‘But I ought to see if Uncle Stephen wants me.’ He got up, but the young poacher did not stir.
Tom stood for a moment looking down at him: then he said, ‘Won’t you walk back with me?’
Instantly Deverell sprang to his feet. A slight flush had come into his swarthy face, and Tom, with rather mixed feelings, saw that he was extraordinarily pleased. He was glad, of course, that he was pleased; but he didn’t want him to be so pleased as all that, because really he had meant no more than a mere politeness.
They returned by another route. The field path Tom knew bore round to the left, but Deverell took him straight on in the direction of the Manor woods. This surely was a roundabout way, Tom thought, unless he actually climbed the wall and took a short cut through the grounds: and he wondered if he might propose doing so.
‘Will you be coming down to the river to-morrow, Mr. Tom?’
‘I don’t know: Uncle Stephen may want me.’
‘But if he doesn’t want you.’
‘I don’t know: I’d rather not make any promise.’
‘Well, I’ll come along on the chance.’
‘But you mustn’t. It’s not worth while: I’m almost sure to be doing something else: there are lots of things I have to do.’
‘Yes, I’ll come.’
Tom could say no more, and they scrambled through the hedge and down on to the road. The Manor wall faced them, and Tom looked at it and looked at Deverell. ‘I say, wouldn’t it be a short cut if I got over here?’ he asked. The top of the wall was some three feet higher than his head, but he could climb it all right if he were to be given a leg up.
‘It might,’ Deverell replied.
‘I think I’ll try it. Do you mind?’
‘You’ll have a long drop on the other side; it’s lower than it is here.’
Tom could not tell from his manner whether Deverell minded being left or not. It was ridiculous thinking of such things. Why should he mind? Nevertheless, it was on the tip of his tongue to say that after all he would go home by the road, when he felt himself suddenly lifted in the young poacher’s arms. He scraped with his toes for a foothold, found one, and next moment was astride of the wall.
He smiled down at his companion. ‘I say, you’re jolly strong,’ he exclaimed admiringly. ‘I wish I was like that.’
‘I’ll make you like that: all you need’s living in the open for a bit; you’re tough enough.’
‘Only metaphorically speaking,’ Tom replied.
The poacher’s sombre eyes were fixed upon him; he really was a frightfully serious person—far too serious for comfort. ‘You won’t laugh at my jokes,’ Tom said. ‘I don’t call that being a pal.’
Slowly—very slowly—a faint smile dawned on Deverell’s face.
‘All the same, I like them, Mr. Tom.’
‘Then I’ll prepare more for next day… . Are you sure you don’t mind my leaving you?’
‘Not the way we are now, Mr. Tom.’
‘What way are we now?’
‘We’re friends.’
‘Yes, of course we’re friends. And if I don’t see you for a day or two, I’ll see you soon. Good-bye.’
With this he dropped down into the tangled wilderness on the other side,
CHAPTER IX
It was a wilderness. Not a sign of a clearing anywhere. He would simply have to break a passage through. Long streamers of goose-grass attached themselves to his jacket and trousers; he was soon covered with down and pollen and cuckoo-spit, and, to protect his face, was obliged to hold aside the branches with both hands while his feet stumbled among hidden roots and creepers. The branches were tough and elastic, the briars and thistles painful, the nettles stung him even through his trousers; but he was determined not to go back, though very soon he had lost all sense of direction, and when he looked behind him could see how hopelessly crooked was the path he had beaten down. The important thing was to get out of this jungle as quickly as possible, for the ground was becoming soft and muddy, and in wet weather must be little better than a swamp. Fortunately there had been no rain for a week or two, yet even as it was the sticky black mud more than once rose above the tops of his shoes. He struggled on, now quite blindly, and when eventually he did emerge into a comparatively open tract of higher ground, he was hot, breathless, and smeared all over with a protective colouring of vegetable matter.
He cleaned his shoes in the grass and removed some of the less tenacious dirt from his clothes, but the fact that his trousers showed several large green stains and his new jacket had acquired a jumble-sale appearance did not trouble him. More immediate discomforts were the scratches and stings which seemed to leave not an inch of him without its own particular smart. And where was the house? He hadn’t the remotest idea. It might be to the right of him or it might be to the left, but what actually faced him was a low wall—either a very ancient or a very badly built wall, for there were gaps everywhere, many with young trees thrusting through them. This surely must be the old garden Uncle Stephen had referred to—a separate enclosure within the main grounds, cut off from the surrounding woods for a definite purpose. And in fact, threading his way between giant boles of trees, he presently came upon what had once been an avenue, though now a thick carpet of mossy grass covered it. Whither did it lead, and what was this place upon which he had stumbled? He had a sense of breaking in upon some private and secret spot. But not forbidden, since Uncle Stephen had sent him out to look for it. The intense silence of the woods rose up around him like a flame.
Chequered bands of golden fire splashed on the moss-dark sward. A stilled loveliness breathed its innocent spell. Then suddenly a hare bounded across the path, and the trilled liquid pipings of hidden thrush and blackbird broke on his ears like the awakening of life. The music came to him in curves of sound. All the beauty he loved best had this curving pattern, came to him thus, so that even the rounding of a leaf or the melting line of a young human body impressed itself upon him as a kind of music. The avenue turned, widened, a house was there.
It was long and low, thatched with pale yellow straw over which climbed trailing boughs of old man’s beard. The strangest home he had ever seen, built of wood and thickly covered with a dark, small-leaved ivy. Up the sides of the porch, looping and twining all about it, grew this old man’s beard; and the roof, jutting out to form a narrow cloister below, was supported by trunks of trees—the natural, unhewed trunks, bulging and crooked—and they too, like the walls, were densely coated with layer upon layer of ivy. The unusual depth of this vegetable growth was what indeed gave the house its strangeness, its at first sight startling suggestion of life. It was alive. Watching it intently, Tom imagined he could see the walls—though ever so slightly—swelling and contracting in a slow breathing. The woodwork round the door and windows had once been painted white; the three chimneys were of different heights, and set between them in the straw thatch was a latticed dormer-window, dark and u
ncurtained. The window was open. Tom saw nobody, yet he had a feeling that someone was watching him, and he never lost consciousness of this, though presently he turned his back on the house. A narrow lawn of moss-thickened grass sloped down from the stained door-steps to a grass terrace, where a further flight of balustraded steps descended to a pool rimmed with stone. On an island in the middle of the pool stood a naked boy holding an urn tilted forward, though through its weedy mouth no water splashed. The fountain was choked. A tuft of grass had found a roothold in the hollow of the boy’s thigh; and on one side of him crouched an otter, on the other was an owl. All round the pool were rough grey boulders coated with mosses, dark green creepers, and trailing weeds. Between the stones sprang scarlet and yellow grasses, hart’s-tongue fern, and bushes of cotoneaster, barberry, and lavender. His garden must have been blown to the fountain boy by wandering winds, or dropped by passing birds. On the dark surface of his pool floated the flat glossy leaves of water-lilies, and the lonely little sentinel gazed down at them, or at his own black shadow, or perhaps he was asleep, awaiting the spell-breaker.
Tom knelt on the rim of the pool and dabbled his hand in the water. It was warm and viscid, its faint smell not unpleasant. He let it drop from his fingers, and on the back of his hand tiny snail-shells glistened. He wondered for how many creatures this choked fountain was the whole world. The moon would turn it to silver, and the first arrows of the rising sun would turn it to gold. In autumn dead leaves would drift over it; in winter it would be frozen to ice and its small guardian be turned to a snow-boy. Tom’s busy mind, and perhaps busier emotions, began to weave a story round the solitary urn-bearer. Being of his own composition the story followed the dictates of his temperament, just as a drifting branch will follow the current of a stream. He was always making up such stories, in which he lived his secret life of waking dreams and sleeping dreams, and the hidden current deepened day by day and year by year, as its soundless flow bore on inevitably to a predestined sea.
Some instinct made him look round at the house, and immediately the web of fancy was broken. For at the open window he saw not a boy in a story, but a real boy, looking down at him through a screen of green leaves. Tom’s eyes grew round as O’s. He was very much surprised. It had not been this kind of watcher he had expected—of humans he had felt sure the house was empty. Yet this boy was no ghost, he was as real as Tom himself He was staring straight at him too; their eyes met; and Tom, conquering a shyness which always overtook him at inopportune moments, smiled. He could not be sure whether the other boy smiled back or not, he was gone so quickly, leaving the window blank and dark. Tom wondered if he were coming downstairs or merely hiding.