The art of life is very largely the art of burying bones. That is the science of mental economy. When a man is confronted with a problem which he cannot solve; when, so to speak, Fate presents him with a bone which he cannot crack, sometimes, without intent, he slinks away with it and, like a dog, buries it, in the undefined hope that at a later date he may unearth it and find it then more manageable. Even so, during the sea voyage, Jim unconsciously buried the bewildering thought of Monimé. He was a careless fellow, very reprehensible, having no actual harm in him, yet bearing a record pock-marked, so to speak, with the sins of omission. He was one of the world’s tramps by nature; and now once more he was out upon the high road, and the lights of the city wherein he had slept had faded behind him as he wandered onwards into another sunrise. It is true that he wrote her a long and intense letter upon the day after his departure, and that he posted this upon his arrival at Marseilles; but his brain, by then full of other things, conjured up no clear vision of her, and his heart sent forth no impassioned message with the written word. He had been deeply stirred by her, but also he had been baffled; and, as in the case of a dream, he made no effort to retain the sweetness of the memory.
[59]
On the morning of his arrival he called at the office of the solicitors who had inserted the advertisement, and was not a little startled to find himself greeted with that kind of obsequiousness which he had supposed to have vanished from Lincoln’s Inn fifty years ago.
The little pink-and-white man who was the senior partner, and whose name was Beadle, rubbed his hands together as though he were washing them, and actually walked backwards for some paces in front of his visitor, bowing him into a shabby leather chair which stood beside the large, imposing desk.
“I hope,” he crooned, when Jim had established his identity, “that we may still have the duty, and pleasure, of serving you, sir, as we have served your uncle and your grandfather.”
“I hope so,” replied Jim. “I suppose you know all the ins and outs of the family affairs.”
Mr. Beadle smilingly directed the young man’s attention to a number of black tin boxes stacked in the corner of the room. “The Tundering-West documents for the last two hundred years,” he declared, blowing his breath through his teeth, an action which served him for laughter.
Jim had a vision of legal formalities and lawyers’ rigmaroles—things which he had always detested; and the passing thought contributed to the growing dislike he felt for the harmless, but sycophantic, Mr. Beadle.
“Well, first of all,” he said, “tell me what my inheritance consists of, and what sort of income I’ve got.”
Mr. Beadle explained that the little property[60] comprised some two hundred acres, most of which were rented; the score of houses and cottages which constituted the tiny little village; the small but comfortable manor-house; and twenty thousand pounds of invested capital. This was better than Jim had expected, and his pleasure was manifest by the broad smile upon his tanned face.
“You see, you will have quite a comfortable income in a small way,” the solicitor told him. “I do not think that your duties will embarrass you. You will find your tenants very respectful and deferential country-people, who will give you little bother; and your obligations as landlord will be very easily discharged.”
“They’re a bit behind the times, eh?” suggested Jim.
“Ah, my dear sir,” said Mr. Beadle, “I am thankful to say that there are still some parts of the English countryside where a gentleman may live in comfort, and where the people keep their place.”
Jim was astonished by the remark, for he had believed such sentiments to be entombed in the novels of long ago. “Poor old England!” he murmured. “We’re a comic race, aren’t we, Mr. Beetle?”
“‘Beadle,’” the little old man corrected him; and “Sorry!” said Jim.
They spoke later of the tragedies which had thus brought the inheritance out of the direct line, and hereat came the conventional sighs from Mr. Beadle, as forced as his laughter. Jim was told how his cousin, Mark, had died in India of pneumonia, and how his uncle and the remaining son, James, having gone to the Lakes that the old gentleman[61] might recover his equanimity, were both drowned in a sudden squall while sailing at a considerable distance from the shore. The bodies were recovered and brought to Eversfield for burial; and very solemnly the solicitor produced a photograph of the memorial tablet which had been set up in the church.
“Some day, I trust a very long time hence, your own mural tablet will be set up there,” he said, after Jim had handed back the photograph in silence. “‘Nihil enim semper floret; ?tas succedit ?tati,’ as the good Cicero says.”
“Quite so,” said Jim.
“It has all been a terrible blow to me,” sighed Mr. Beadle. “The late Mr. Tundering-West treated me quite as a personal friend.”
“Did he really?” Jim was going to be rude, but checked himself. He felt an extraordinary hostility to this well-meaning but servile little personage. “I shall go down there to-morrow,” he remarked, as he rose to take his departure, “and I’ll probably have the house thoroughly renovated before I go into it.”
“I don’t think you will find much that requires alteration,” Mr. Beadle assured him, his hand raised in a gesture of deprecation. “Hasty changes are always undesirable; and, when you have grown into the spirit of the place I think you will find that you have a duty to the past.” He checked himself, and bowed. “I trust you will not mind an old man giving you that advice,” he murmured, as they shook hands. He bowed so low that it appeared to be a complete physical collapse.
[62]
On the following day Jim motored to Eversfield in a hired open car. He could with greater ease have gone by train to Oxford, and could have driven over in a fly; but he wanted to have the pleasure of spending some of his new money, and, moreover, a fifty-mile drive through the fair lands of Berkshire and Oxfordshire in the radiance of a summer’s day appealed to his imagination. Nor was he disappointed. He acknowledged the beauties of the land of his birth with whole-hearted pleasure; and his eyes, weary with long gazing upon leaden skies and burning sands, were soothed in a manner beyond scope of words by the green fields, the soft foliage of the trees, and grey skies of a hot, hazy morning. It is true that the roads were extremely dusty, and that his face and clothes were soon thickly powdered; but, as the chauffeur had provided him with a pair of motoring glasses, he was not troubled in this respect.
The little hamlet of Eversfield lay seemingly asleep in its hollow amidst the richly timbered hills, as, at midday, he drove up to the grey stone gates of his future home. Here was the narrow village green just as he had last seen it when he was a boy: on one side of the lane which opened on to it were these imposing gates; on the other side were the little church and moss-covered gravestones leaning at all angles, as though the dead were whispering together deferentially at the entrance of the manor. Upon the green were the old stocks, and the stump and worn steps of the ancient cross; and behind them stood the thatched cottages backed by the stately elms.
[63]
“I suppose in years to come,” he thought, “I shall be walking through these gates to the church on Sundays, followed by the lady of my choice and half-a-dozen children; and the villagers will nudge one another and say ‘Here comes Squire and all his little squirrels.’ ... Good Lord!”
The exclamation was due to the sudden feeling that he had walked into a trap, that he had been caught by immemorial society, and would soon be forced to conform to its ways; and, as the car passed in at the gates of the manor, he had, for a moment, a desire to jump out and run for his life.
A short, straight drive, flanked by clipped box-trees, led to the main door of the timbered Tudor house; and here the new owner, dusty, and somewhat untidily dressed, was received by the gardener and his buxom wife, who had both grown grey in his uncle’s service. The man held his cap in his hand, and touched his wrinkled forehead with his finger a number of times, painfully anxious to find favour; while his wife curtseyed to him at least thrice.
“Are you the gardener?—what is your name?” Jim asked briskly, feeling almost as awkward as the man he addressed, but determined to go through the ordeal with honour.
“Peter, sir,” said the gardener. “Peter Longarm, sir. I rec’lect you, sir, when you was no more’n so ’igh, I do.”
“Why, of course,” Jim replied. “I remember you now. You’re the fellow who told my uncle when I broke the glass of the forcing frame.”
[64]
The old man looked sheepish. “I ’ad to do my dooty, sir,” he said. “I ask your pardon.”
“Duty,” Jim thought to himself. “I’m beginning to know that word. I wonder what it really means.” He turned to the woman. “Now, please go and open the doors of all the rooms, and then leave me to walk through the house by myself.” He wanted to be alone to realize his new possession and to dream his dream of future ease. Mrs. Longarm eyed him nervously for a moment before obeying his instructions; she told her husband afterwards, with tears in her eyes, that she felt as though she were surrendering the house to a cut-throat foreigner.
As he wandered, presently, from room to room he was at first overpowered by the feeling that he was intruding upon the privacy of some sort of family life which he did not understand. His uncle’s wife had been dead for three or four years, but there were still many traces of her influence: the drawing-room, for example, was furnished in a style which called to his mind faded pictures of feminine tea-parties. Here was the old piano upon which the good lady must have tinkled the songs of which the music still lay in the cabinet near by—songs such as My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair, and Ah, Welladay my Poor Heart. And here was the little sewing-table where had doubtless rested the silks and needles for her embroidery. Perhaps it was she who had chosen the gilt-framed engravings upon the walls—the depressed picture of “Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness;” a youthful portrait of Alexandra, Princess of Wales; “Jacob weeping[65] over Joseph’s coat;” the sprightly “Hawking Party,” and so forth.
Looking around, he experienced a sensation of mingled mirth and awe, and he hoped that the ghost of his aunt would not haunt him when he laid sacrilegious and violent hands upon these things, as at first he intended to do. The chintzes appeared to be of more recent date; but these, too, would have to go, for, as a pattern, he detested sprays of red roses tied with blue ribbons.
The dining-room, hall and staircase, being panelled and hung with family portraits, were impressive in their conveyance of a sense of many generations; and the hereditary library, if sombre, was interesting. Jim was very fond of old books, and he stood there for some time taking the calf-bound volumes from the shelves, and turning over the ancient pages. But, the morning-room, with its red-covered chairs, its mahogany sideboard, and its sham Chinese vases, was distressing. Yet here, as in the drawing-room, there was a chaste and awful solemnity, from which he shrank, as a conscientious Don Juan might shrink at a lady’s prie-Dieu.
The larger bedrooms upstairs, with their mahogany wardrobes and heavy chests of drawers full of clothes, and cupboards full of boots and hats, were startling in their association with their late tenants. On a table beside his uncle’s bed there lay a recent novel, which Jim himself had also just read: it constituted a gruesome link between the living and the dead. He glanced about him and through the window, down the drive, almost expecting to see the apparitions of his relatives stalking up from the[66] family vault in the churchyard to see what he was about. His uncle would probably think him a dreadful scallawag, for the old gentleman had been an accredited pillar of Church and State, with, so the cupboards testified, a mania for collecting the top hats he had worn on Sundays or when in town. He had been a model of propriety, and the monumental stone, the photograph of which he had seen at the solicitors, stated that he had “nobly upheld the traditions of his race.”
Jim felt depressed, and presently went out into the garden which was ablaze with flowers; and here, after a late meal of sandwiches, eaten upon an ornamental stone bench, his spirits revived, for the manor and its setting formed a very beautiful picture. If only he could get rid of all those hats and clothes and old photographs!
A sudden idea occurred to him: he would go and find the padre, and tell him to take these things for the poor of the parish. They must be got rid of at once, even though every man in the village be obliged to wear a top hat. They must all be gone before he came here again, or he would never bring himself to live in the house at all! He hurried down the drive, asked Peter Longarm at the lodge to point out the vicarage to him, and thereafter hastened on his errand.
Near the church, however, and at a point where a gap in the trees revealed a distant view of the dreaming, huddled spires of Oxford, flanked by the lonely tower of Magdalen College, he met with a white-bearded clergyman whom he presumed to be the vicar, and at once accosted him.
[67]
“Excuse me,” he said, ingratiatingly, barring his way. “Would you care to have some old hats?—I mean of course, would your flock like to wear them?—Top hats, you know, and old boots, too, if you want them.”
The elderly gentleman was annoyed, and, with a curt “No thank you, not to-day,” proceeded on his way. Jim, however, called after him, coaxingly: “They are quite good hats really; they only want brushing.”
At this the man of God stopped and turned, looking at Jim’s somewhat dusty figure with wonderment. “Do I understand that you are selling old hats?” he asked, endeavouring to speak politely.
Jim rushed feverishly into explanation. “No, I want to get rid of them,” he gabbled; “I want to get rid of all sorts of things—hats, coats, trousers, dressing-gowns, shirts, vests, boots, slippers, old photographs, umbrellas ...” He paused for breath, inwardly laughing.
Very slowly and deliberately the clergyman adjusted his eyeglasses low down upon his nose, and stared at Jim. “Young man,” he said, “is this a jest at my expense?”
“Good Lord, no!” Jim answered. “I’m in deadly earnest. I can’t possibly live in the house with all these things. You will help me, won’t you? How would it be if you came over to-morrow and cleared them all out, and then had a meeting or something, and gave them as prizes to the regular church-goers?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” the[68] clergyman responded, gently but firmly pushing him aside. “Good-day!”
Jim stared at him as he walked. “You are the vicar, aren’t you?” he asked.
“No, I’m not,” the other replied somewhat sharply, over his shoulder; “I’m the President of Magdalen.”
Jim uttered an exclamation of impatience, and hastened on to the Vicarage.
The servant who appeared in response to his knock, was about to ask him his name, when the vicar, an old man with a clean-shaven, kindly face, and grey hair, happened to cross the hall.
“Yes, what is it, what is it?” he asked, coming to the door, while the maid retired.
“Are you the vicar?” Jim asked, beginning more cautiously.
“I am,” the other responded.
“You really are? Well I want to ask you about some old clothes. I....”
The vicar held up his hand. “No, I have none to sell you,” he said smiling sadly. “I wear mine out.”
Jim laughed aloud. “First I’m thought to be selling them, and now you think I’m buying them,” he exclaimed. “We certainly are a nation of shop-keepers.”
The vicar was puzzled. “I don’t understand. What is it you want?”
“I have a lot of hats and old clothes I want to get rid of. I thought you might like them.”
The clergyman bowed stiffly. “It is very kind of you,” he said frigidly. “My stipend, I admit, is[69] small, but I am not yet reduced to the necessity of wearing a stranger’s cast-off clothing.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” Jim hastily explained. “And they’re not mine: they belonged to my late relatives. I am just coming to live at the manor, and I thought the poor of the parish would....”
The vicar interrupted him. “I beg your pardon. Are you ...?” He hesitated, incredulous.
“Yes, I’m the new Tundering-West,” Jim told him.
The other held out his hands. “Well, well!” he cried. “And I thought you were....” He hesitated.
“The old clothes man,” laughed Jim.
“Oh, very droll!” the vicar smiled, shaking him warmly by the hand. “How ridiculous of me! Do come in, my dear sir!”
Jim followed him into the drawing-room, and here he found a little old lady, who was introduced to him as Miss Proudfoote, and a florid, middle-aged man with a waxed moustache, who looked like a sergeant-major, and proved to be Dr. Spooner, the local medical man. They had evidently been lunching at the Vicarage, and were now drinking the post-prandial concoction which the English believe to be coffee. They both greeted him with a sort of deference, which however, did not conceal their curiosity.
During the next ten minutes Jim heard a great deal of his “poor dear uncle” and his unfortunate cousins. The tragedy of their deaths, it seemed, had cast the profoundest gloom over the village; but it was a case of “the King is dead; long live[70] the King!” and all three of his new acquaintances appeared to be anxious to pay him every respect.
Dr. Spooner asked him from what part of England he had just come, and the news that he had been living abroad and had not visited the land of his birth for many years caused a sensation. The thought occurred to him that he ought not to mention Egypt, or any other land which had recently known him as Jim Easton; for any such revelations might bring discredit upon him, and he wished to start his life at Eversfield without any handicap. He therefore spoke only of California, referring to it casually as a country where he had resided.
Miss Proudfoote turned to the vicar. “Is it not extraordinary,” she said, “how many of our young men shoulder what Mr. Kipling calls ‘the white man’s burden’ and go forth to live amongst the heathen?” Her geography was evidently at fault, but out of consideration for her years and her sex, no correction was forthcoming. “I suppose,” she proceeded, “you met with our missionaries out there? It is wonderful what a great work the Church Missionary Society is doing all over the world.”
The Doctor here had the hardihood to interpose. “Oh, but California is a part of the United States of America ...” he ventured.
“How foolish of me!—of course,” smiled the old lady. “The Americans are quite an educated people. I met an American traveller once in Oxford: a pleasant spoken young man he seemed, so far as I could understand what he said.”
“Yes,” remarked the vicar, “America can no[71] longer be called ‘the common sewer of England,’ as it was when I was a boy.”
Jim stared from one to the other in amazement. “But America is the largest and most progressive part of the Anglo-Saxon race,” he protested. “They are already ahead of us in many ways.”
Miss Proudfoote was shocked, and she showed it. “It is evident that you do not know England,” she replied, coldly.
“I mean,” he emphasized, “it always seems to me a fine thought that England can never die, because she will live again over there; and then she’ll have another lease of life in Australia; and so on. This England here may die, but the English will go on for ever and ever, it seems to me. And wherever their home may be,” he added, laughing, “they’ll always think it ‘God’s own country,’ and think themselves the chosen people.”
Miss Proudfoote looked anxiously at him, hoping that there was some good in him. “I trust,” she said, “that it is now your intention to settle down?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I fancy my wanderings are over.”
“Heaven has placed you in a very responsible position,” she said, gazing earnestly at him. “I am sure our best wishes will be with you in your duties.”
“Yes, indeed,” sighed the vicar, whose name, as Jim had just ascertained, was Glenning. “Are you a married man, may I ask?”
“Oh no,” Jim replied.
Miss Proudfoote patted his arm. “We shall have to find you a wife,” she smiled.
[72]
Jim was aghast, and hastily changed the subject. “Now about the old clothes,” he began.
Mr. Glenning coloured, slightly. “What an absurd error for me to have made,” he said. “Now, tell me, what is it you wish me to do?”
“I’m going back to London to-day,” Jim explained, “and I want you, while I am away, to go through all my uncle’s things, and give away to the poor everything you think I shall not want. Just use your own judgment.”
“It will be a melancholy duty,” he replied.
“I’m sure it will,” the new Squire answered, “but, I tell you frankly, anything useless I find here when I return I shall burn.”
The vicar raised his hands; the doctor sniffed; and Miss Proudfoote looked at the stranger indignantly.
“That is rather hasty, is it not?” she asked, tremulously.
Jim felt awkward. He had made a bad impression, and he knew it. “You see,” he tried to explain, “my uncle died so suddenly and the place is littered with his things. All I want to keep is the furniture, and the silver, and the books, and that sort of thing, but I will see to that myself.”
Miss Proudfoote turned away suddenly and Jim, to his horror, saw her raise a handkerchief to her eyes. He could have kicked himself. He wished the floor would open and engulf him. He looked in despair at the two men.
“You know I haven’t seen my uncle since I was a boy,” he stammered. “I am a complete stranger.”
“He was our very dear friend,” said Mr. Glenning.