“Besides, there’s another thing, Master Highworth, which I wouldn’t tell to everyone; but old Keeper Jackson’s forgiven me. He didn’t at first, not he. In the night, he used to come to me, ‘Darn ’ee,’ he said, ‘I’ll have ’ee yet,’ he said. He used to come all sideways at me with his blue teeth at first; not quite at first, you understand, Master Highworth; for he must have been a bit confused at first, from old pin-fire and being in the moon, but it was when I was with the bull he began to come. Many a shiny night he come at me. ‘You come back,’ he said, ‘you best come quiet, or darn ’ee I’ll make ’ee come.’ And he done his best to make me come; there were temptations come to make me go back, but I saw through them. But he lost track of me among this new religion. He didn’t know the lingo or something, or else their tiddlewinks upset him.
“Then one night he come again; be blest if he didn’t come again. But he didn’t come like he ever come afore. He come in sort of shiny, not what you would call an angel, Mr. Ridden and sir, but he hadn’t so many teeth as the other times, if you understand what I mean. ‘Darn ’ee, Rust,’ he says to me, ‘you’ve given me a bad go in Tencombe graveyard, along of all them damned and women. But I’m out of sitting there,’ he said, ‘and I don’t mind about it now, like I did. It’s a darned poor snipe,’ he said, ‘could sit on a grave seven years and bear malice at the end. Besides,’ he said, ‘I’m going; they’ve given me a horse, and I’m off in the morning.’
“He wouldn’t tell me where he was off to. He was always one of they artful ones. ‘I thought I’d tell ’ee I was going,’ he said, ‘there’s a whole lot of us got horses.’
“But 41 Medinas Close is where you’ll find me, Master Hi; it isn’t a nosegay, nor anything to please the eye. It’s back of the cathedral, not dead back of it, for that’s the Bishop’s, but keep to the right of that, and then there’s a gate, but you mustn’t take that, for it don’t lead anywhere, but bear round, and then you’ll come to a place stinks like chemicals, for it is chemicals; only you don’t go in there, but more round, if you understand, till you come into Two Brothers Fountain Lane. Well, it isn’t far from there. Two naked brothers in a fountain; you’d think they’d a-been ashamed; but these foreigners don’t know the value of clothes the same way that we do.”
“How did you know me?” Hi asked. “I was only ten or eleven when you saw me last.”
“Master Highworth, I’ve known all your family since I don’t know when. I know your blessed great-grandfather, when he wore his pigtail. But use is second nature, as we say; they all wore pigtails, come to think of it. Then I know old Mr. William and Master Rowton, not your brother Master Rowton, but your father’s, the squire’s, older brother that was. Lord, he was a proper one, Master Rowton. ‘A horse can jump anything,’ he used to say, ‘if you want him to.’ Well, he wouldn’t take warnings; not once, nor twice, so the third time they bring him home on a door. That was jumping into that pit at Beggar’s Ash. Old Mr. William didn’t say much about his son, but he took on about the six-year-old, for he’d backed him in a race.
“So when I seen ’ee, I said, ‘That’s a Ridden out of the Foliats,’ I said; ‘don’t tell me, because it can’t be anybody else. And it won’t be Mr. Chilcote, for Mr. Chilcote keeps his lip cocked up, and besides, this is too young for Mr. Chilcote. And Mr. Rowton’s got a swelled mouth, like old Mr. William had the same, almost as though he’d had a smack on it, so it won’t be him. It’s young Mr. Highworth.”
Hi promised to see him within a few days. He did not like to offer the old man money, but contrived to make him a present, partly as a wedding present, partly to celebrate his meeting with a Tencombe man. He found himself in an upper room of the hotel, looking out on an array of roofs from which washing was hanging. Somehow, the washing looked more romantic in that bright light than it had ever looked in England. He was cheered at being at last an independent man of the world. He had had a lovely voyage, and at the end of it there had been this welcome, from one who knew all his people and the land from which he came.
His room had a scarlet carpet and a red plush rocking-chair, which seemed out of place in that climate, already as hot as an English May. The walls, which had been white, were marked with dirty fingers. Somebody, who had occupied the room earlier that morning, had smoked cigars in it. Bitten ends of cigar were in a flower-pot near the window. The place seemed frowsy, untidy and feckless. The mosquito-curtains over his bed were smeared with the bloody corpses of old mosquitoes. All round the room, wherever the carpet failed to reach the wall, little pale yellow ants came and went. He sat down upon his bed, feeling suddenly homesick; then, realising that there were three electric fans in the room, he set them all going, knelt down and began to unpack. He had not knelt for thirty seconds when something bit him viciously in the leg; glancing down, he saw a small black thing flying at great speed along the floor. He looked at the place bitten, which had swollen and was itching. He scratched the place and went back to his unpacking, but was bitten again and then again. This time, having learned to be very swift, he slew his attacker, who smelt, when dead, worse than he liked. Feeling indignant at being placed in such a room, he went down to the hotel bar to see the proprietor.
“Yes, Mr. Ridden,” said the proprietor, “what is it? What can I do for you?”