He seemed in so strained and nervous a mood that I did not trust him to handle the heavy bucket and chain, nor to return unaided to the caravan with his burden. When we drew into the beam of light again, I could see Spelthorne inside, stooping over the little cooking-stove in his shirt-sleeves and a great sombrero. If anything, his clothes were even more tattered and soiled than his companion’s. At sound of our clanking pails he turned, stared, then swept me a low bow with the sombrero.
‘Thoughtless, very thoughtless!—indeed, most selfish of Grewes!’ he said confidentially, for the long lean man had hurried away to attend to the horse. ‘A good fellow, such a good fellow, you cannot think! But he has this little failing of sometimes taking advantage of any kindness that— But excuse me: I must get the potatoes on!’
I had hardly gone a dozen paces towards home, when I heard him pounding after me.
‘What is—the name,’ he asked breathlessly, ‘of—of this village?’ And when I had told him: ‘There are beautiful old cottages here, are there not? And quaint people? And charming country round about? Such a spot—isn’t it?—where two artists could find incessant inspiration, and—and—’
But the question had been put to me before, and too often.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said I discouragingly. ‘The place is very quiet and humdrum, and most inconvenient—no railway and no roads to anywhere and—’
‘The very place!’ he broke in delightedly. ‘I shall persuade poor Grewes to remain here with me a month.’
And when I took a last look at the night some hours after, I beheld the faint glow, from the windows of the caravan upon the green, with dismal foreboding. A month of that prospect! And not only that, but something worse; for, upon the wings of the slow night wind, there drifted over to me the mournful thrumming of a guitar.
III
As it has turned out, the caravanners have proved very little trouble to any, and to myself least of all. In a day or two, they moved down to the riverside, choosing one of the wildest and leafiest corners of the old abandoned chalk-quarry; and for a week past I have seen nothing of them but a wisp of blue smoke from afar.