“Very well. I can understand your feelings; and very likely I should have the same. You are like me, Kit, in many things; although a deal more obstinate.”
My uncle was fond of saying this; but it always took my breath away, from the sublimity of his self-ignorance. It was like an oak-tree bidding an osier not to be so gnarled and stiff.
“Now remember one thing,” he went on, as he saw me smiling just a little; “in spite of your stubbornness, you shall obey me, or I will know the reason why. You have tried what good hard work would do, and it has done you more harm than good. Because your mind has not been in it, and you have only been fretting at every stroke, though you stuck to it, like a Briton. To-day you are twice the man, because you have had a little change, and seen a little of a different life, and allowed yourself to speak more freely of your sad affairs, instead of snapping at every one who mentioned them. Henceforth you shall never do more than eight hours’ work in these gardens in one day, I mean of course all by yourself. For sixteen hours every day, you have avoided every one, and carried on work, work, all alone, as if you never meant to speak again. I am pretty tough; but it would have killed me, although I am no chatterbox. And it has gone some way towards killing you. I left you to your own foolish plan, because of your confounded obstinacy. But now, I will try to be as stubborn myself. I will come after you, with my supple-jack, unless you give me your word on this. And another thing you must bear in mind. You have taken your good aunt’s money for a particular purpose; and you will have had it on false pretences, if you go on thus.”
“I intend to use it for what she meant. I would never have taken it otherwise. You shall not complain of my sticking too close, but rather of my absence. But I shall not draw my weekly money from you, unless I have done a good week’s work. To-morrow I shall do very little, because I am going to London. To-night I shall work for an hour or two, because I have a job to finish. And I will look in, when you are having your last pipe.”
There was every promise of a fruitful season, though not without plenty to grumble at, for I never knew a season good all round, such as more favoured countries have. After getting myself into working trim, I left my lonely little dwelling, with the front door so arranged that any one who knew the trick could enter without knocking. And in the kitchen fireplace—for I never used the parlour now—I left a little coke alight, so that it would smoulder on for hours, and could soon, with the aid of wood and coal, be nursed into glow enough to boil the kettle, which stood ready upon the hob. For I always fancied, when I went to work, that I might find my wife, when I should come home, making it a home for me once more, and listening to the singing of the kettle. And I left the lane door unfastened too, that she might have no trouble to get in.
Somehow or other, I seemed to feel that something strange would befall me that night, but I went about my work as usual. I had a large peach-tree to go over, for the second time that season, fetching every shoot into place, checking or sometimes cutting out the over-coarse and sappy growth, nipping every blistered leaf, removing the fruit, where it grew too thick or had no chance of swelling, and offering the many other small attentions, without which fine fruit may not be. And outside the border on the gravel walk I had the garden engine full of water for the nightly bath, which fruit and foliage in warm weather love, as much as vermin hate it.
The sun had been down for an hour or more, and the dusk was deepening into night, and I was just at the point of leaving off for fear of hammering the wrong sort of nail—when I heard a little sound, like the scraping of a twig, and turning my head, without any great hurry, beheld, as distinctly as I see this paper, the face of a man looking steadfastly at me. It was a large and solid face, as calm and unmoved as the full moon appears rising out of the haze on a fine summer night.
I could see no hat above the face, nor any human figure below it, only a face looking through a gap in a clipped arbor vitæ tree, about fifteen yards from where I stood. It was gazing at me quite serenely, and as if I were hardly worth the trouble.
Through all the time of my long distress, I had wholly lost the sense of fear—bodily fear I mean, and nervous trembling, such as brave men have. This had surprised me more than once; things that used to make me jump had not the least effect on me. The reason was simply that my life was not of the smallest value to me. And I wondered that I was not frightened now, because I knew that I ought to be.
Without even taking my hammer up, I leaped across the border, to seize this fellow; but my foot caught in something, and down I went. A heavy garden-line had been left, stretched along by one of our men, who had been “making up the edge” that day. I knew it was there, but had not thought of it in my hurry; and now I was lame in both knees for a minute, for the shock had been very violent. At first I thought that my left leg was broken; but after a bit of rubbing it got better, and I hobbled towards the Thuja tree, which had been clipped into the shape of a fiddle by Bill Tompkins.