by Unknown
But I had told my fibs to no purpose. The old lady seemed a bit flustered. “If you don’t mind, Mr Sanderson, I’d rather not speak of it.”
I thought I knew what was troubling her. I filled her glass and my own. “Look here,” I said. “When you sold the place to me it was a fair deal. You weren’t called upon to go thirty years back, and no reasonable man would expect it. I’m satisfied. Here I am, and here I mean to stop, and twenty billiard-rooms wouldn’t drive me away. I’m not complaining. But, just as a matter of curiosity, I’d like to hear your story.”
“What’s your trouble with the room?”
“Nothing to signify. But there’s a game played there and marked there—and I can’t find the players, and it’s never finished. It stops always at sixty-six—forty-eight.”
She gave a glance over her shoulder. “Pull the place down,” she said. “You can afford to do it, and I couldn’t.” She finished her port. “I must be going, Mr Sanderson. There’s rain coming on, and I don’t want to sit in the train in my wet things. I thought I would just run down to see how you were getting on, and I’m sure I’m glad to see the old place looking up again.”
I tried again to get the story out of her, but she ran away from it. She had not got the time, and it was better not to speak of such things. I did not worry her about it much, as she seemed upset over it.
I saw her across to the station, and just got back in time. The rain came down in torrents. I stood there and watched it, and thought it would do my garden a bit of good. I heard a step behind me and looked round. A fat chap with a surly face stood there, as if he had just come out of the coffee-room. He was the sort that might be a gentleman and might not.
“Afternoon, sir,” I said. “Nasty weather for motoring.”
“It is,” he said. “Not that I came in a motor. You the proprietor, Mr Sanderson?”
“I am,” I said. “Came here recently.”
“I wonder if there’s any chance of a game of billiards.”
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “Table’s shocking. I’m having it all done up afresh, and then—”
“What’s it matter?” said he. “I don’t care. It’s something to do, and one can’t go out.”
“Well,” I said, “if that’s the case, I’ll give you a game, sir. But I’m no flyer at it at the best of times, and I’m all out of practice now.”
“I’m no good myself. No good at all. And I’d be glad of the game.”
At the billiard-room door I told him I’d fetch a couple of decent cues. He nodded and went in.
When I came back with my cue and Harry’s, I found the gas lit and the blinds drawn, and he was already knocking the balls about.
“You’ve been quick, sir,” I said, and offered him Harry’s cue. But he refused and said he would keep the one he had taken from the rack. Harry would have sworn if he had found that I had lent his cue to a stranger, so I thought that was just as well. Still, it seemed to me that a man who took a twisted cue by preference was not likely to be an expert.
The table was bad, but not so bad as Harry had made out. The luck was all my side. I was fairly ashamed of the flukes I made, one after the other. He said nothing, but gave a short, loud laugh once or twice—it was a nasty-sounding laugh. I was at thirty-seven when he was nine, and I put on eleven more at my next visit and thought I had left him nothing.
Then the fat man woke up. He got out of his first difficulty, and after that the balls ran right for him. He was a player, too, with plenty of variety and resource, and I could see that I was going to take a licking. When he had reached fifty-one, an unlucky kiss left him in an impossible position. But I miscued, and he got going again. He played very, very carefully now, taking a lot more time for consideration than he had done in his previous break. He seemed to have got excited over it, and breathed hard, as fat men do when they are worked up. He had kept his coat on, and his face shone with perspiration.
At sixty-six he was in trouble again; he walked round to see the exact position, and chalked his cue. I watched him rather eagerly, for I did not like the score. I hoped he would go on. His cue slid back to strike, and then dropped with a clatter from his hand. The fat man was gone—gone, as I looked at him, like a flame blown out, vanished into nothing.
I staggered away from the table. I began to back slowly towards the door, meaning to make a bolt for it. There was a click from the scoring-board, and I saw the thing marked up. And then—I am thankful to say—the billiard-room door opened, and I saw Harry standing there. He was very white and shaky. Somehow, the fact that he was frightened helped to steady me.
“Good heavens, uncle!” he gasped, “I’ve been standing outside. What’s the matter? What’s happened?”
“Nothing’s the matter,” I said sharply. “What are you shivering about?” I swished back the curtain, and sent up the blind with a snap. The rain was over now, and the sun shone in through the wet glass—I was glad of it.
“I thought I heard voices—laughing—somebody called the score.”
I turned out the gas. “Well,” I said, “this table’s enough to make any man laugh, when it don’t make him swear. I’ve been trying your game of one hand against another, and I daresay I called the score out loud. It’s no catch—not even for a wet afternoon. I’m not both-handed, like the apes and Harry Bryden.”
Harry is as good with the left hand as the right, and a bit proud of it. I slid my own cue back into its case. Then, whistling a bit of a tune, I picked up the stranger’s cue, which I did not like to touch. I nearly dropped it again when I saw the initials “J.H.” on the butt. “Been trying the cues,” I said, as I put it in the rack. He looked at me as if he were going to ask more questions. So I put him on to something else. “We’ve not got enough cover for those motor-cars,” I said. “Lucky we hadn’t got many here in this rain. There’s plenty of room for another shed, and it needn’t cost much. Go and see what you can make of it. I’ll come out directly, but I’ve got to talk to that girl in the bar first.”
He went off, looking rather ashamed of his tremors.
I had not really very much to say to Miss Hesketh in the bar. I put three fingers of whisky in a glass and told her to put a dash of soda on the top of it. That was all. It was a full-sized drink and did me good.
Then I found Harry in the yard. He was figuring with pencil on the back of an envelope. He was always pretty smart where there was anything practical to deal with. He had spotted where the shed was to go, and he was finding what it would cost at a rough estimate.
“Well,” I said, “if I went on with that idea of mine about the flower-beds it needn’t cost much beyond the labour.”
“What idea?”
“You’ve got a head like a sieve. Why, carrying on the flower-beds round the front where the billiard-room now stands. If we pulled that down it would give us all the materials we want for the new motor-shed. The roofing’s sound enough, for I was up yesterday looking into it.”
“Well, I don’t think you mentioned it to me, but it’s a rare good idea.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
That evening my cook, Timbs, told me he’d be sorry to leave me, but he was afraid he’d find the place too slow for him—not enough doing. Then old Silas informed me that he hadn’t meant to retire so early, but he wasn’t sure—the place was livelier than he had expected, and there would be more work than he could get through. I asked no questions. I knew the billiard-room was somehow or other at the bottom of it, and so it turned out. In three days’ time the workmen were in the house and bricking up the billiard-room door; and after that Timbs and old Silas found the Regency suited them very well after all. And it was not just to oblige Harry, or Timbs, or Silas that I had the alteration made. That unfinished game was in my mind; I had played it, and
wanted never to play it again. It was of no use for me to tell myself that it had all been a delusion, for I knew better. My health was good, and I had no delusions. I had played it with Josiah Ham—with the lost soul of Josiah Ham—and that thought filled me not with fear, but with a feeling of sickness and disgust.
It was two years later that I heard the story of Josiah Ham, and it was not from old Mrs Parker. An old tramp came into the saloon bar begging, and Miss Hesketh was giving him the rough side of her tongue.
“Nice treatment!” said the old chap. “Thirty years ago I worked here, and made good money, and was respected, and now it’s insults.”
And then I struck in. “What did you do here?” I asked.
“Waited at table and marked at billiards.”
“Till you took to drink?” I said.
“Till I resigned from a strange circumstance.”
I sent him out of the bar, and took him down the garden, saying I’d find him an hour or two’s work. “Now, then,” I said, as soon as I had got him alone, “what made you leave?”
He looked at me curiously. “I expect you know, sir,” he said. “Sixty-six. Unfinished.”
And then he told me of a game played in that old billiard-room on a wet summer afternoon thirty years before. He, the marker, was one of the players. The other man was a commercial traveller, who used the house pretty regularly. “A fat man, ugly-looking, with a nasty laugh. Josiah Ham his name was. He was at sixty-six when he got himself into a tight place. He moved his ball—did it when he thought I wasn’t looking. But I saw it in the glass, and I told him of it. He got very angry. He said he wished he might be struck dead if he ever touched the ball.”
The old tramp stopped. “I see,” I said.
“They said it was apoplexy. It’s known to be dangerous for fat men to get very angry. But I’d had enough of it before long. I cleared out, and so did the rest of the servants.”
“Well,” I said, “we’re not so superstitious nowadays. And what brought you down in the world?”
“It would have driven any man to it,” he said. “And once the habit is formed—well, it’s there.”
“If you keep off it I can give you a job weeding for three days.”
He did not want the work. He wanted a shilling, and he got it; and I saw to it that he did not spend it in my house.
We have got a very nice billiard-room upstairs now. Two new tables and everything ship-shape. You may find Harry there most evenings. It is all right. But I have never taken to billiards again myself.
And where the old billiard-room was there are flower-beds. The pansies that grow there have got funny markings—like figures.
Linda
MY elder brother, Lorrimer, married ten years ago the daughter of a tenant farmer. I was at that time a boy at school, already interested in the work which has since made me fairly well known, and I took very little interest in Lorrimer or my sister-in-law. From time to time I saw her, of course, when I paid brief visits to their farm in Dorsetshire during the holidays. But I did not greatly enjoy these visits. Lorrimer seemed to me to become daily more morose and taciturn. His wife had the mind of a heavy peasant, deeply interested in her farm and in little else, and only redeemed from the commonplace by her face. I have heard men speak of her as being very beautiful and as being hideous. Already an artist, I saw the point of it all at once: her eyes were not quite human. Sometimes when she was angry with a servant over some trivial piece of neglect, they looked like the eyes of a devil. She was exceedingly superstitious and had little education. Our guardian had the good sense to send me to Paris to complete my art education, and one snowy March I was recalled suddenly from Paris to his death-bed. I was at this time twenty-two years of age, and of course the technical guardianship had ceased. Accounts had been rendered, Lorrimer had taken his share of my father’s small fortune and I had taken mine. But we both felt a great regard for this uncle who, during so many years, had been in the place of a father to us. I found Lorrimer at the house when I arrived, and learned then, for the first time, that our uncle had strongly disapproved of his marriage. He spoke of it in the partially conscious moments which preceded his end, and he said some queer things. I heard little, because Lorrimer asked me to go out. After my guardian’s death Lorrimer returned to his farm and I to my studies in Paris. A few months later I had a brief letter from Lorrimer announcing the death of his wife. He asked me, and, indeed, urged me not to return to England for her funeral, and he added that she would not be buried in consecrated ground. Of the details of her death he said nothing, and I have heard nothing to this day. That was five years ago, and from that time until this last winter I saw nothing of my brother. Our tastes were widely different—we drifted apart.
During those five years I made great progress and a considerable sum of money. After my first Academy success I never wanted commissions. I had sitters all the year round all the day while the light lasted. I worked very hard, and, possibly, a little too hard. Of my engagement with Lady Adela I will say nothing, except that it came about while I was painting her portrait, and that the engagement was broken off in consequence of the circumstances I am about to relate.
It was then one day last winter that a letter was brought to me in my studio in Tite Street from my brother Lorrimer. He complained slightly of his health, and said that his nerves had gone all wrong. He complained that there were some curious matters on which he wished to take advice, and that he had no one to whom he could speak on those subjects. He urged me to come down and to stay for some time. If there were no room in the farmhouse that suited me for my painting he would have a studio built for me. This was put in his usual formal and business-like language, but there was a brief postscript—“For Heaven’s sake come soon!” The letter puzzled me. Lorrimer, as I knew him, had always been a remarkably independent man, reserved, taking no one into his confidence, resenting interference. His manner towards me had been slightly patronizing, and his attitude towards my painting frankly contemptuous. This letter was of a man disturbed, seeking help, ready to make any concessions.
As I have already said, I had been working far too hard, and wanted a rest. During the last year I had made twenty times the sum that I had spent. There was no reason why I should not take a holiday. The country around my brother’s place is very beautiful. If I did work there at all, I thought it might amuse me to drop portraits for a while and to take up with my first love—landscape. There had never been any affection between Lorrimer and myself, but neither had there been any quarrel; there was just the steady and unsentimental family tie. I wrote to him briefly that I would come on the following day, and I hoped he had, or could get, some shooting for me. I told him that I should do little or no work, and he need not bother about a studio for me. I added: “Your letter leaves me quite in the dark, and I can’t make out what the deuce is the matter with you. Why don’t you see a doctor if you’re ill?”
It was a tedious journey down. One gets off the main line on to an insignificant local branch. People on the platform stare at the stranger and know when he comes from London. In order to be certain where he is going, they read with great care and no sense of shame the labels on his luggage. There are frowsy little refreshment rooms, tended by frowsy old women, who could never at any period of their past have been barmaids, and you can never get anything that you want. If you turn in despair from these homes of the fly-blown bun and the doubtful milk, to the platforms, you may amuse yourself by noting that the further one gets from civilization, the greater is the importance of the railway porter. Some of them quite resent being sworn at. I got out at the least important station on this unimportant line, and as I gave up my ticket, asked the man if Mr Estcourt was waiting for me.
“If,” said the man slowly, “you mean Mr Lorrimer Estcourt, of the Dyke Farm, he is outside in his dog-cart
.”
“What’s the sense of talking like that, you fool?” I asked. “Have you got twenty different Estcourts about here?”
“No,” he replied gravely, “we have not, and I don’t know that we want them.”
I explained to him that I was not interested in what he wanted or didn’t want, and that he could go to the devil. He mumbled some angry reply as I went out of the station. Lorrimer leant down from the dog-cart and shook hands with me impassively. He is a big man, with a stern, thin-lipped, clean-shaven face. I noted that his hair had gone very grey, though at this time he was not more than thirty-six years of age. He shouted a direction that my luggage was to come up in the farm cart that stood just behind, bid me rather impatiently to climb up, and brought his whip sharply across his mare’s shoulder. There was no necessity to have touched her at all, and, as she happened to be a good one, she resented it. Once outside the station yard, we went like the wind. So far as driving was concerned, his nerves seemed to me to be right enough. The road got worse and worse, and the cart jolted and swayed.
“Steady, you idiot!” I shouted to him. “I don’t want my neck broken.”
“All right,” he said. He pulled the mare in, spoke to her and quieted her. Then he turned to me. “If this makes you nervous,” he said, “I’d better turn round and drive you back. A man who is easily frightened wouldn’t be of much use to me at Dyke Farm just now.”
“When a man drives like a fool, I suppose it’s always a consolation to call the man a funk who tells him so. You can go on to your farm, and I’ll promise you one thing—when I am frightened I will tell you.”
He became more civil at once. He said that was better. As for the driving, he had merely amused himself by trying to take a rise out of a Londoner. His house was six miles from the station, and for the rest of the way we chatted amicably enough. He told me that he was his own bailiff and his own housekeeper—managed the farm like a man and the house like a woman. He said that hard work suited him.