Suddenly a new and shining brass tablet at the side of the chancel caught his eye; and he hastened forward, his heart beating with a kind of dread of that which he would see written thereon for all to read. The inscription was truly staggering:—
In grateful and undying memory of James Champernowne Tundering-West, Esquire, of Eversfield Manor, who, after an unassuming but exemplary life, marked by true christian piety and an unswerving devotion to duty, met an untimely death, in the flower of his manhood, at the hand of an assassin, near Pisa, Italy, this stone has been set up by his sorrowing widow, Dorothy Tundering-West.
Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.—Rev. ii. 10.
“Good Lord!” Jim muttered, his sallow face for a moment red with shame. “And in face of this, I have got to come back to life, so that this ‘sorrowing widow’ may divorce me, and thereby empower me to give the name of Tundering-West to my son and leave him in my will the property I abandoned! A pretty muddle!”
He turned away, sick at heart. “O England, England!” he whispered. “Dear nation of hypocrites!—at all costs keeping up the pretence so that the traditional example may be set for coming generations.... Presently they will remove this tablet, and instead they will scrawl across their memories the words: ‘He failed in his duty, because he hid not his dirty linen.’”
He almost ran from the church.
During the continuation of his walk he came upon two of the villagers, but in each case he was able to turn to the hedge as though searching for the last remaining blackberries, and so avoided a face-to-face encounter. His road led him past the back of the woods of the Manor, those woods whither he had so often fled for comfort; and it occurred to him that before walking the further two miles to Jenny’s cottage he might whistle the call which used to bring the poacher to him in the old days. It was just the sort of misty afternoon on which Smiley was wont to slip in amongst the trees.
He therefore stepped into a gap in the encircling hedge of bramble and thorn, the straight muddy road passing into the haze behind him, and the brown, misty woods, carpeted with wet leaves, before him; and, curving his hand around his mouth, he uttered that long low whistle which sounded like the wail of a lost soul, and which more than once had struck terror into the heart of some passing yokel.
Thrice he repeated it, pausing between to listen for the answering call and the familiar cracking of the twigs; and he was about to make a final attempt when of a sudden he heard a slight sound upon the road some fifty yards away. Turning quickly, he saw the ragged, well-remembered figure dart out from the hedge into the middle of the road, eagerly running to right and left like a dog that has lost the scent. He was hatless, and his mop of dirty red hair was unmistakable.
Jim stepped out into the roadway, and thereat Smiley-face came bounding towards him, his arms stretched wide, his smile extending from ear to ear, and his little blue eyes agleam.