The Devil's Garden

by W. B. Maxwell

The fantastic dread which recurred to his memory now, as he turned from Dean Street into Oxford Street, had been started when he first heard the legendary tale of Hadleigh Wood. It was said that seventy or a hundred years ago some louts had caught girls bathing in the stream and violated them. The legend declared that one of the offenders was executed and the rest were sent to prison for life. Perhaps it was all a myth, but it helped to give the upper wood a bad name; and out of these fabled materials William had built his fancy—dread and desire combining—a wish that, when he pushed the branches apart, he might see a lass bathing; and a fear that he would not be able to resist an impulse to plunge into the water and carry her off. As he walked through the shade cast by summer foliage, with a hot whisper of nascent virility tormenting his senses, the fancy was almost strong enough to be a hallucination. He could imagine that he saw female garments on the bank, petticoats fallen in a circle, boots and stockings hard by; he could hear the splashing of water on the other side of the holly bushes; he could feel the weight of the nude form slung across his shoulder as he galloped into the gloom with his prey. And later, under the increasing stress of his adolescence, he used to have a dread of realities—a conviction that he could not trust himself. He thought at this period not of legends, but of facts—of things that truly happened; of the brutality of hayfields; of a man full of beer dealing roughly with a woman-laborer who unluckily came in his way alone and defenceless at nightfall.

From all this kind of vague peril his wife had saved him. When in the course of his education he read of nymphs and satyrs, and was startled by what seemed a highly elaborated version of his own crude imaginings, he had already, through the influence of Mavis, attained to states of mind that rendered such suggestions powerless to stir his pulses or warm his blood; and now, as he recognized with proud satisfaction, he had reached a stage of development wherein the improper advances of a thousand houris would evoke merely indignation and repugnance. It was not a matter that one could boast about to anybody except one's self; but he wondered if Mr. Ridgett, or several other customers who might remain nameless, could say as much.

Thanks to Mav! Yes, he ought always let himself be guided by her.

And then, by a natural transition of ideas, he thought of that other great instinct of untutored man—the fighting instinct. When a person is rising in the social scale he should learn to govern that also. Although the nobs themselves do it when pushed to it, scrapping is not respectable. It is common. Nevertheless there must be exceptions to every rule: anger when justified by its provocation is not, can not be reprehensible.

But dimly he understood that with him cerebral excitement, when it reached a certain pitch, overflowed too rapidly into action. Whereas the gentry, after their centuries of repressive training, could always control themselves. They could fight, but they could wait for the appropriate moment. If you stung them with an insult, they resolved to avenge themselves—but not necessarily then and there; and their resolve deepened in every instant of delay, so that when the fighting hour struck, their heads worked with their arms, and they fought better than the hasty peasants.

And then he thought of the various advantages still possessed by gentlefolk. How unfairly easy is the struggle of life made for them, in spite of all the talk about equality; how difficult it still is for the humbly-born, in spite of Magna Chartas, habeas corpuses, and Houses of Commons! Finishing his long ramble, he remembered the biggest and grandest gentleman of his acquaintance, and wondered bitterly if the Right Honorable Everard Barradine had done so much as to raise a little finger on his behalf.

Five days had passed, and as yet not a single official at St. Martin's-le-Grand had learnt to know him by sight. Every morning he was forced to repeat the whole process of self-introduction.

"Dale? Rodchurch, Hants. Let's see. What name did you say? Dale! Superseded—eh?"

But on the sixth morning somebody knew all about him. It was quite a superior sort of clerk, who announced that Mr. Dale and all that concerned Mr. Dale had been transferred to other hands, in another part of the building. Dale gathered that something had happened to his case; it was as though, after lying dormant so long, it had unexpectedly come to life; and in less than ten minutes he was given a definite appointment. The interview would take place at noon on the day after to-morrow.

To-day was Saturday. The long quiescent Sunday must be endured—and then he would stand in the presence of supreme authority.