Men of Marlowe's

by Mrs. Henry Dudeney

“Chops?”

“At thirteen pence a pound! No, thank you. A bit of beefsteak and a spring cabbage. I shan’t be long. I shall just run down Red Lion Street.”

She whisked off with her worn purse and her string bag. Chaytor began to dream of the country, which he knew very well, although he had never been more than ten miles from London since his childhood. But Minnie was a Somersetshire girl. She was always scattering careless word pictures. He knew just when you might find the first primroses, in sheltered spots, what cherry blossom was like, how they carted home hay. He knew the earliest date for the cuckoo, and how persistently the wryneck called through April and May; knew that the first notes of the nightingales were unsteady, that ladies’ smocks and king-cups only grew in damp spots.

He laughed. He felt that the country was his own rich inheritance. It really was ridiculous! A grim, rare, ripe joke that he—with such a kingdom of earth and sky—should be going through this farce. Why was he here? Why had he come? Why was he strangling himself slowly with thick London smoke? Why was he driving himself half mad to make both ends meet, to turn off articles suited to the popular taste—the debased popular taste which he scorned! It was queer. He laughed again.

Then he thought he would go out. Minnie would be annoyed when he came home and said that he had only been for a walk and not for a berth; but when you are playing at life, just masquerading, a woman’s anger does not matter very much. He went across the square. I saw him go. It was such a spring-like morning—in the Inn—that I almost called out of the window to say that I would come too. Instead of that, I watched him from behind the curtain and noticed, for the first time, how slowly he went, how hunched his shoulders were.

He went across to the Holborn Town Hall, where the trams start. He went by one to Stamford Hill and got down and went crawling along a row of new houses. They were villas of the sort that Minnie had been ambitious for when there was some chance of his screw being raised to two hundred pounds. They were semi-detached; between each pair was a narrow passage, convenient for the carting of coal and refuse. He stopped at one of these shoots; the passage was barred by a gate, an unpainted gate of gray oak.

He pushed it open, shut it softly, gave a last look back, and then went down the narrow entry. New walls of cheap brick rose on each side; the April wind hooted softly after him. At the end of the passage was another gate, which he went through. Beyond it was open common.

There had been rain. He saw stretches of dim brown and bleached yellow, broken here and there by the bright mustard tint of fully blown broom and patched with little pools on which the sun shone, turning them into irregular plates of turquoise. There was a tethered goat with a little kid by her side. Haughty geese, with their newly hatched families behind them, strutted proudly. There were ever so many young things; humpy, clumsy calves, ducklings trying to swim in the pools with all the dignity and address of their elders; a colt, set on long, stick-like, squarely placed legs—like a toy wooden horse—and with a funny tail like a hearth brush. Chaytor laughed heartily with recollection of this colt when he was telling us his experiences.

The heather sprang up after his feet had crushed it. Everything was whole and sweet. He sniffed at a delicious, intangible smell. He sat down, the ground yielded to his body like a pillow. He gave his aching lungs, clogged with so many years of smoke and fog, their fill. There was no house in sight, no, not one. No chimney speared the sky. The sky! He looked up, and the blue and yellow blinded him. He looked down and saw only wide clean common, patched by broom and gorse, spread with withered heather. A bird flew up singing, as if its throat would burst. Across the common came a jerky, regular call. Something tight came up in his neck and his eyes grew hot and dry. He had heard the lark. He had heard the cuckoo. He had ceased to masquerade, to play the fool. He had come to his own. He jumped up with a tremendous feeling of strength and exhilaration and went on. He swung his shoulders with a grand free swing. He looked about him, intently, critically, as a man looks at his inheritance.

The common seemed to be garnering itself and the face of the country was changing. He was approaching a pastoral district. He crossed a bridge; on one side was an iron railing, on the other a low coping of stone. He climbed over a stile. It had easy steps and a broad top—a good stile to linger on. It led into a little copse; merely a copse fringed with hazel, with a thick carpet of rotting leaves, with primroses and oxlips holding up their starry heads, with bluebells making a powdery haze.