There was about this unusual gentleman that which doubly
attracted Mr. Wriford. FRONTISPIECE. [See page 59].

THE CLEAN
HEART

BY

A. S. M. HUTCHINSON

AUTHOR OF "THE HAPPY WARRIOR," ETC.

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
R. M. CROSBY

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1914

Copyright, 1914,
By A. S. M. HUTCHINSON.

All rights reserved

Published, September, 1914

THE COLONIAL PRESS
C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.

Create in me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right
spirit within me.
The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit: a broken and
a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
PSALM LI.

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES

CHAPTER

I. [Mr. Wriford]
II. [Young Wriford]
III. [Figure of Wriford]
IV. [One Runs: One Follows]
V. [One is Met]
VI. [Fighting It: Telling It]
VII. [Hearing It]

BOOK TWO

ONE OF THE JOLLY ONES

I. [Intentions, Before having his hair cut, of a Wagoner]
II. [Passionate Attachment to Liver of a Wagoner]
III. [Disturbed Equipoise of a Counterbalancing Machine]
IV. [First Person Singular]
V. [Intentions, in his Nightshirt, of a Farmer]
VI. [Rise and Fall of Interest in a Farmer]
VII. [Profound Attachment to his Farm of a Farmer]
VIII. [First Person Extraordinary]

BOOK THREE

ONE OF THE FRIGHTENED ONES

I. [Body Work]
II. [Cross Work]
III. [Water that Takes your Breath]
IV. [Water that Swells and Sucks]
V. [Water that Breaks and Roars]

BOOK FOUR

ONE OF THE OLDEST ONES

I. [Kindness without Gratitude]
II. [Questions without Answers]
III. [Crackjaw Name for Mr. Wriford]
IV. [Clurk for Mr. Master]
V. [Maintop Hail for the Captain]

BOOK FIVE

ONE OF THE BRIGHT ONES

I. [In a Field]
II. [In a Parlour]
III. [Trial of Mr. Wriford]
IV. [Martyrdom of Master Cupper]
V. [Essie's Idea of It]
VI. [The Vacant Corner]
VII. [Essie]
VIII. [Our Essie]
IX. [Not to Deceive Her]
X. [The Dream]
XI. [The Business]
XII. [The Seeing]
XIII. [Prayer of Mr. Wriford]
XIV. [Pilgrimage]

THE CLEAN HEART

BOOK ONE
ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES

CHAPTER I
MR. WRIFORD

I

Her hands were firm and cool, and his were trembling, trembling; but her eyes were laughing, laughing, and his own eyes burned.

Mr. Wriford had caught at her hands. For a brief moment, as one in great agony almost swoons in ecstasy of relief at sudden cessation of the pain, he had felt his brain swing, then float, in most exquisite calm at the peace, at the strength their firm, cool touch communicated to him. Then Mr. Wriford saw the laughing lightness in her eyes, and felt his own—whose dull, aching burn had for that instant been slaked—burn, burn anew; and felt beat up his brain that dreadful rush of blood that often in these days terrified him; and felt that lift and surge through all his pulses that sometimes reeled him on his feet; and knew that baffling lapse of thought which always followed, as though the surge were in fact a tide of affairs that flung him high and dry and left him out of action to pick his way back—to grope back to the thread of purpose, to the train of thought, that had been snapped—if he could!

Mr. Wriford knew that the day was coming when he could not. Every time when, in the midst of ideas, of speech, of action, the surge swept him adrift and stranded him vacant and bewildered, the effort to get back was appreciably harder—the interval appreciably of greater length. The thing to do was to hang on—hang on like death while the tide surged up your brain. That sometimes left you with a recollection—a clue—that helped you back more quickly.

Mr. Wriford hung on.

The surge took him, swept him, left him. He was with Brida in Brida's jolly little flat in Knightsbridge, holding her hands. It was a longish time since he had been to see her. She had come into the room gay as ever—

Mr. Wriford got suddenly back to the point whence he had been suddenly cut adrift; remembered the surge, realised the lapse, recalled how he had caught at her hands, how they had soothed him, how, like a mock, he had seen the laughter in her eyes. Mr. Wriford threw back her hands at her with a violent motion, and went back a step, not meaning to, and knew again the frequent desire in moments of stress such as had just passed, and in moments of recovery such as he now was in, to shout out very loudly a jumble of cries of despair, as often he cried them at night, or inwardly when not alone. "O God! Oh, I say! I say! I say! Oh, this can't go on! Oh, this must end—this must end! Oh, I say! I say!" but mastered the desire and effected instead a confusion of sentences ending with "then."

A very great effort was required. Mastery of such impulses had been undermined these ten years, slipping from him these five, altogether leaving him in recent months. To give way, and to release in clamorous cries the tumult that consumed him, would ease him, he felt sure; but it would create a scene and have him stared at and laughed at, he knew. That stopped him. Fear of the betrayal of his state, that day and night he dreaded, once again saved him; and therefore in place of the loud cries, Mr. Wriford—thirty, not bad-looking, clever, successful, held to be "one of the lucky ones"—substituted heavily: "Well then! All right then! It's no good then! Very well then!"

She was a trifle surprised by the violent action with which he released her hands. But she knew his moods (not their depth) and had no comment to make on his roughness. "Oh, Phil," she cried, and her tone matched her face in its mingling of gay banter and of tenderness, "Oh, Phil, don't twist up your forehead so—frowning like that. Phil, don't!" And when he made no answer but with working face just stood there before her, she went on: "You know that I hate to see you frowning so horribly. And I don't see why you should come and do it in my flat; I'm blessed if I do!"

He did not respond to the gay little laugh with which she poked her words at him. He had come to her for the rest, for the comfort, he had felt in that brief moment when he first caught at her hands. Instead, the laughter in her eyes informed him that here, here also, was not to be found what day and night he sought. The interview must be ended, and he must get away. He was in these days always fidgeting to end a conversation, however eagerly he had begun it.

It must be ended—conventionally.

"Well, I'm busy," he said. "I must be going."

"Now, Phil!" she exclaimed, and there was in her voice just a trace of pleading. "Now, Phil, don't be in one of your moods! It's not kind after all the ages I've never seen you." A settee was near her, and she sat down and indicated the place beside her. "Going! Why, you've scarcely come! Tell me what you've been doing. Months since you've been near me! Of course, I've heard about you. I'm always hearing your name or seeing it in the papers. Clever little beast, Phil! I hear people talking about The Week Reviewed, or about your books; and I say: 'Oh, I know the editor well'; or 'He's a friend of mine—Philip Wriford,' and I feel rather bucked when they exclaim and want to know what you're like. You must be making pots of money, Phil, old boy."

He remained standing, making no motion to accept the place beside her. "I'm making what I should have thought would be a good lot once," he said; and he added: "You ought to have married me, Brida—when you had the chance."

Just the faintest shadow flickered across her face. But she replied with a little wriggle and a little laugh indicative of a shuddering at her escape. "It would have been too awful," she said. "You, with your moods! You're getting worse, Phil, you are really!"

He had seen the shadow. Had it stayed, he had crossed to her, caught her hands again, cried: "O Brida, Brida!" and in that shadow's tenderness have found the balm which in these days he craved for, craved for, craved for. He saw it pass and took instead the mock of her light tone and words. "Worse—yes, I know I'm worse," he said violently. "You don't know how bad—nor any one."

"Tell me, old boy."

"There's nothing to tell."

"You're working too hard, Phil."

"I'm sick of hearing that. That's all rubbish."

"Poor old boy!"

She saw his face work again; but "It's our press night," was all he said. "We go to press to-night. I've the House of Commons' debate to read and an article to write—two articles. I must go, Brida."

She told him: "Well, you won't get the debate yet. It's much too early. Do sit down, Phil. Here, by my side, and talk, Phil, do!"

He shook his head and took up his hat; and she could see how his hand that held it trembled. He was at the door with no more than "Good-bye" when she sprang to her feet and called him back: "At least shake hands, rude beast!" and when he gave his hand, she held it. "What's up, old boy?"

He drew his hand away. "Nothing, Brida."

"Just now—when you first came—what did you mean by saying: 'All right then—it's no good then.' What did you mean by that, Phil?"

His face, while she waited his reply, was working as though it mirrored clumsy working of his brain. His words, when he found speech, were blurred and spasmodic, as though his brain that threw them up were a machine gone askew and leaking under intense internal stress, where it should have delivered in an amiable flow. "Why, I meant that it's no good," he said, "no good looking for what I can't find. I don't know what it is, even. Brida, I don't even know what it is that I want. Peace—rest—happiness—getting back to what I used to be. I don't know. I can't explain. I can't even explain to myself—"

"Why, old boy?"

"I can do it at night. Sometimes I can get near it at night. Sometimes I lie awake at night and call myself all the vile, vile names I can think of. Go through the alphabet and find a name for what I am with every letter. But at the back of it—at the back of it there's still—still a reservation, still an excuse for myself. I want to tell some one. I want to find some one to tell it all to—to say 'I'm This and That and This and That, and Oh! for God Almighty's sake help me—help me—'"

She knew his moods, and of their depth more at this interview than ever before, and yet still in no wise fathomed them. He stopped, twisted in mind and in face with his efforts, and she (his moods unplumbed) laughed, thinking to rally him, and said: "Why, no, it's no good calling yourself names to me, Phil."

He broke out more savagely than he had yet spoken, and he had been violent enough:

"That's what I'm telling you. No good—no good! You'd laugh. You're laughing now. Everybody laughs. I'm lucky!—so successful!—so happy!—no cares!—no ties!—no troubles! Other people have bad times!—others are ill!—breakdowns and God knows what, and responsibilities, and burdens, and misfortunes! but me!—I've all the luck—I've everything!—"

When she could stop him, she said: "I don't laugh at you, Phil. That's not fair."

"You always do. I thought I'd come to you to-day to see. I always come to you hoping. But I always go away knowing I'm a fool to have troubled. Well, I won't come again. I always say that to myself. Now I've said it to you. Now it's fixed. I won't come back again. It's done—it's over!"

She put out her hand and touched his. "Now, Phil!"

But he shook off her touch. "You don't understand me. That's what it comes to."

"Phil!"

"No one does. You least of all."

"Phil, you're ill, old boy."

"Well, laugh over that!" cried Mr. Wriford and turned with a shuffling movement of his feet; and she saw him blunder against the door-post as though he had not noticed it; and stood listening white he went heavily down the stairs; and heard him fumble with the latch below and slam the outer door behind him.

II

Now you shall picture this Mr. Wriford—thirty, youthful of face, not bad-looking, clever, successful, one of the lucky ones—walking back from Brida's little flat in Knightsbridge to the office of The Week Reviewed off Fleet Street, and as he walked, rehearsing every passage of his own contribution to the interview that had just passed, and as he rehearsed them, abusing himself in every line of it. It was not where he had been rude or unkind to Brida that gave him distress. There, on the contrary, he found brief gleams of satisfaction. There he had held his own. It was where he had made a fool of himself and exposed himself that gnawed him. It was where she had laughed at him that he was stung. He made an effort to distract his thoughts, to fix them on the work to which he was proceeding, to attach them anywhere ("Anywhere, anywhere, any infernal where!" cried Mr. Wriford to himself). Useless. They rushed back. "From here to that pillar-box," cried Mr. Wriford inwardly, "I'll fix on what I'm going to write in my first leader." He was not ten steps in the direction when he was writhing again at having made a fool of himself with Brida. It was always so in these days. "I never exchange words with a soul," cried Mr. Wriford, "not even with a cab-driver—" He was switched off on the word to recollection of a fare-dispute with a cab-driver on the previous day. He was plunged back into the humiliation he had suffered himself to endure by not taking a strong line with the man. It had occupied him, gnawing, gnawing at him right up to this afternoon with Brida, when new mortification, new example of having been a weak fool, of having been worsted in an encounter, had come to take its place.

So there was Mr. Wriford—one of the lucky ones—back with this old gnawing again; and, realising the swift transition from one to the other, able to complete his broken sentence with a bitter laugh at himself for the instance that had come to illustrate it.

"I never exchange a word with a soul, not even with a cab-driver," cried Mr. Wriford, "but I show what a weak fool I am, and then brood over it, brood over it, until the next thing comes along to take its place!" Whereupon, and with which, another next thing came immediately in further proof and in further assault upon the thin film of Mr. Wriford's self-possession that was in these days left to him. In form, this came, of a cyclist carrying a bundle of newspapers upon his back and travelling at the hazard and speed and with the dexterity that belong to his calling. Mr. Wriford stepped off the pavement to cross the road, stepped in front of this gentleman, caused him to execute a prodigious swerve to avoid collision, ejaculated very genuinely a "Sorry—I'm awfully sorry," and was addressed in raucous bawl of obscene abuse that added new terms to the names which, as he had told Brida, he often lay awake at night and called himself.

Mr. Wriford gained the other side of the road badly jarred as to his nerves but conscious only of this fresh outrage to his sensibilities. Was it that he looked a fool that he was treated with such contempt? Yes, that was it! Would that coarse brute have dared abuse in that way a man who looked as if he could hold his own? No, not he! Would a man who was a man and not a soft, contemptible beast have cried "Sorry. I'm awfully sorry"? No, no! A man who was a man had damned the fellow's eyes, shouted him down, threatened him for his blundering carelessness. He was hateful. He was vile. Now this—now this indignity, this new exhibition of his weakness, was going to rankle, gnaw him, gnaw him. There surged over Mr. Wriford again, standing on the kerb, the desire to wave his arms and cry aloud, as he had desired to wave and cry with Brida a few minutes before: "Oh! I say! I say! I say! This can't go on! This can't go on! This has got to stop! This has got to stop!" Habit checked the impulse. People were passing. People were staring at him. They had seen the incident, perhaps. They had witnessed his humiliation and were laughing at him. There was wrung out of Mr. Wriford's lips a bitter cry, a groan, that was articulate sound of his inward agony at himself. He turned in his own direction and began a swift walk that was the slowest pace to which habit could control the desire that consumed him to run, to run—by running to escape his thoughts, by running to shake off the inward mocking that mocked him as though with mocking all the street resounded. It appeared indeed to Mr. Wriford, as often in these days it appeared, that passers-by looked at him longer than commonly one meets a casual glance, and had in their eyes a grin as though they knew him for what he was and needs must grin at the sight of it. Mr. Wriford often turned to look after such folk to see if they were turned to laugh at him. He had not now gone a dozen furious paces, yet twice had wavered beneath glances directed at him, when there greeted him cheerily with "Hullo, Wriford! How goes it?" a healthy-looking gentleman who stopped before him and caused him to halt.

III

Mr. Wriford, desperate to be alone and to run, to run, said: "Hullo, I'm late getting to the office. I'm in a tearing hurry," and stared at the man, aware of another frequent symptom of these days: he could not recollect his name! He knew the man well. Scarcely a day passed but Mr. Wriford saw him. This was the literary editor of The Intelligence, the great daily newspaper with which The Week Reviewed was connected and in whose office it was housed. A nice man, and of congenial tastes; but a man whom at that moment Mr. Wriford felt himself hating venomously, and while he struggled, struggled for his name, experienced the conscious wish that the man might fall down dead and so let him be free, and so close those eyes of his that seemed to Mr. Wriford to be looking right inside him and to be grinning at what they saw. And Mr. Wriford found himself gone miles adrift among pictures of the scenes that would occur if the man did suddenly drop dead; found himself shaping the sentences that he would speak to the policeman who would come up, shaping the words with which, as he supposed would be his duty, he would go and break the news to the man's wife, whom he knew well, and whose shocked grief he found himself picturing—but whose name! Mr. Wriford came back to the original horror, to the fact of standing before this familiar—daily familiar—friend and having not the remotest glimmering of what his name might be....

"I'm off to-morrow for a month's holiday," the man was saying. "A rest cure. I've been needing it, my doctor says. You're looking fit, Wriford."

Habit helped Mr. Wriford to work up a smile. Just what he had been saying to Brida: "I'm so lucky! Other people have bad times!—others are ill!—breakdowns and God knows what!—but me!—I've all the luck!" Mr. Wriford worked up a smile. "Oh, good Lord, yes. I'm always fit. Sorry you're bad." What was his name?—his name! his name!

And the man went on: "You are so!—lucky beggar! When's your new book coming out? What, must you cut? Well, I'll see you again before I go. I'm looking in at the office to-night. I've left you a revised proof of that article of mine. That was a good suggestion of yours. One of the bright ones, you! So long!"

Mr. Wriford—one of the bright ones—shook hands with him; and knew as he did so, and from the man's slight surprise, that it was a stupid thing to do with a man he met every day of his life; and leaving him, became for some moments occupied with this new example of his stupidity; and then back to the distress that he could not, could not recollect his name; and furiously, then, to the agony of the cyclist humiliation; and in all the chaos of it got to a quiet street, and, hurrying at frantic pace, frantically at last did cry aloud: "Oh, I say! I say! I say! I say! This can't go on. This has got to stop! This has got to stop!" and found himself somehow arrived at the vast building of The Intelligence, and at the sight by habit called upon himself and steadied himself to enter.

IV

Called upon himself.... Steadied himself.... He would encounter here men whom he knew.... He must not let them see.... Called upon himself and passed up the stairs towards the landing that held the offices of his paper. There was a lift, but he did not use it. It would have entailed exchange of greeting with the lift-boy, and in these days Mr. Wriford had come to the pitch of shrinking from even the amount of conversation which that would have entailed. For the same reason he paused a full three minutes on his landing before turning along the corridor that approached his office. There were bantering voices which he recognised for those of friends, and he waited till the group dispersed and doors slammed. He hated meeting people, shrank from eyes that looked, not at him, but, as he felt, into him, and, as he believed, had a grin in the tail of them.

Doors slammed. Silence in the corridor. Mr. Wriford went swiftly to his room. The table was littered with proofs and letters. Mr. Wriford sat down heavily in his chair and took up the office telephone. There was one thing to straighten up before he got to work, and he spoke to the voice that answered him: "Do you know if the literary editor is in his room? The literary editor—Mr.—Mr.—?"

"Mr. Haig, sir," said the voice. "No, sir, Mr. Haig won't be back till late. He left word that he'd put his proof on your table, sir."

"Thanks," said Mr. Wriford. "Get through to the sub-editors' room and ask Mr. Hatchard if I may have the Commons' debate report."

Then Mr. Wriford put down the telephone and leaned his head on his hands. "Haig! Of course that was his name! Oh, I say! I say! I say!"

CHAPTER II
YOUNG WRIFORD

I

Come back with Mr. Wriford a little. Come back with him a little to scenes where often his mind, not wanders, but hunts—hunts desperately, as hunts for safety, running in panic to and fro, one trapped by the sea on whom the tide advances. There are nights—not occasional nights, but night after night, night after night—when Mr. Wriford cannot sleep and when, in madness against the sleep that will not come, he visions sleep as some actual presence that is in his room mocking him, and springs from his bed to grapple it and seize it and drag it to his pillow. There is a moment then—or longer, he does not know how long—of dreadful loss of identity, in which in the darkness Mr. Wriford flounders and smashes about his room, thinking he wrestles with sleep: and then he realises, and trembling gets back to bed, and cries aloud to know how in God's name to get out of this pass to which he has come, and how in pity's name he has come to it.

Come back with him a little. Look how his life as he hunts through it falls into periods. Look how these bring him from Young Wriford that he was—Young Wriford fresh, ardent, keen, happy, to whom across the years he stretches trembling hands—to this Mr. Wriford, one of the lucky ones, that he has become.

II

Here is Young Wriford of ten years before who has just taken the tremendous plunge into what he calls literature. Here he is, just battling ardently with its fearful hopes and hazards when there comes to him news of Bill and Freda, his brother and sister-in-law, killed by sudden accident in Canada where with their children and Alice, Freda's elder sister, they had made their home. Here he is at the Liverpool docks, meeting Alice and the three little boys to take them to her mother's house in Surbiton. He is the only surviving near relative of Bill's family, and here he is, for old Bill's sake, with every impulse concentrated on playing the game by old Bill's poor little kids and by Alice who, unhappy at home, has always lived with them and been their "deputy-mother," and is now, as she says, their own mother: here is Alice, with Harold aged nine, Dicky aged eight, and Freddie aged seven; Alice, who dreads coming to her home, who tells Young Wriford in the train:

"I'm not crying for Freda and Bill. I can't—I simply can't realise that even yet. It's not them, Philip. It's the future I'm thinking of. Phil, what's going to happen to my darlings? They've got nothing—nothing. Father's got four hundred a year—less; and I dread that. I tell you I dread meeting mother and father more than anything. Mother means to be kind—it's kind of her to take the children for Freda's sake; but you know what she is and what father is. And I've nothing—nothing!"

Young Wriford knows well enough what Mrs. Filmer is. Dragon Mrs. Filmer he has privately called her to old Bill when writing of duty calls paid to the stuffy little house at Surbiton, where the Dragon dragons it over her establishment and over Mr. Filmer, who has "retired" from business and who calls himself an "inventor." Young Wriford knows, and he has thought it all out, and he has had an amazing piece of success only a fortnight before, and he answers Alice bravely: "Look here, old girl, I've simply colossal news for you. You've not got to worry about all that a damn—sorry, Alice, but not a damn, really. You know I've chucked the office and gone in for literature? Well, what do you think? Whatever do you think? I'm dashed if I haven't got a place on the staff of Gamber's! Gamber's, mind you! You know—Gamber's Magazine and Gamber's Weekly and slats of other papers. They'd been accepting stuff of mine, and they wrote and asked me to call, and—well, I'm on the staff! I've got a roll-top desk of my own and no end of an important position and—what do you think?—three guineas a week! Well, this is how it stands; I've figured it all out. I can live like a prince on twenty-five bob a week, and you're going to have the other one pound eighteen. No, it's no good saying you won't. You've got to. Good Lord, it's for old Bill I'm doing it. Well, look at that now! Nothing! Why, you can tell Mrs. Filmer you've got practically a hundred a year! Ninety-eight pounds sixteen. That's not bad, is it? and twice as much before long. I tell you I'm going to make a fortune at this. I simply love the work, you know. No, don't call it generous, old girl, or any rot like that. It's not generous. I don't want the money. I mean, I don't care for anything except the work. There, now you feel better, don't you? It's fixed. I tell you it's fixed."

III

Here is Young Wriford with this fixed, and with it working, as he believes, splendidly. Here he is living in a bed-sitting-room at Battersea, and revelling day and night and always in the thrill of being what he calls a literary man, and in the pride and glory of being on the staff at Gamber's. He loves the work. He cares for nothing else but the work. That is why the shrewd men at Gamber's spotted him and brought him in and shoved him into Gamber's machine; and that is why he never breaks or crumples but springs and comes again when the hammers, the furnaces, and the grindstones of Gamber's machine work him and rattle him and mould him.

A Mr. Occshott controls Gamber's machine. Mr. Occshott in appearance and in tastes is much more like a cricket professional than Young Wriford's early ideas of an editor. Literary young men on Gamber's staff call Mr. Occshott a soulless ox and rave aloud against him, and being found worthless by him, are flung raving out of Gamber's machine, which he relentlessly drives. In Young Wriford, Mr. Occshott tells himself that he has found a real red-hot 'un, and for the ultimate benefit of Gamber's he puts the red-hot 'un through the machine at all its fiercest; sighs and groans at Young Wriford, and checks him here and checks him there, and badgers him and drives him all the time—slashes his manuscripts to pieces; comes down with contemptuous blue pencil and a cutting sneer whenever in them Young Wriford gets away from facts and tries a flight of fancy; hunts for missed errors through proofs that Young Wriford has read, and finds them and sends for Young Wriford, and asks if it is his eyesight or his education that is at fault, and if it is of the faintest use to hope that he can ever be trusted to pass a proof for himself; puts Young Wriford on to "making-up" pages of Gamber's illustrated periodicals for press, and pulls them all to pieces after they are done, and sends Young Wriford himself to face the infuriated printer and to suffer dismay and mortification in all his soul as he hears the printer say: "Well, that's the limit! Take my oath, that's the limit! 'Bout time, Mr. Wriford, you give my compliments to Mr. Occshott and tell him I wish to God Almighty he'd put any gentleman on to make up the pages except you. It's waste labour—it's sheer waste labour—doing anything you tell us. Take my oath it is."

Young Wriford assures himself that he hates Mr. Occshott, but steadily learns, steadily benefits; finds that he really likes Mr. Occshott and is liked by him; steadily, ardently sticks to it—earns his reward.

"Well, there it is," says Mr. Occshott one day, throwing aside the manuscript over which Young Wriford had taken infinite pains only to have it horribly mangled. "There it is. Have another shot at it, Wriford. And, by the way, you're not doing badly—not badly. You're awfully careless, you know, but I think you're picking it up. We're starting a new magazine, a kind of popular monthly review, and I'm going to put you in nominal charge of it—charge of the make-up and seeing to press and all that. And your salary—you've been here six months, haven't you? Three guineas, you're getting? Well, it'll be four now. Make a real effort with this new idea, Wriford. I'll tell you more about it to-morrow. A real effort—you really must, you know. Well, there it is."

IV

Here is Young Wriford not quite so youthful as a few months before. He has lost his keen interest in games and recreation. He thinks nothing but work, breathes nothing but work; most significant symptom of all, sometimes dreams work or lies awake at night a little because his mind is occupied with work. That in itself, though, is nothing: he likes it, he relishes every moment of it. What accounts more directly for the slight loss of youthfulness, what increasingly interferes with his relish of his work, is what comes up from the Filmer household at Surbiton in form of frequent letters from Alice; is what greets him there when he fulfils Alice's entreaties by giving up his every week-end to spending it as Dragon Mrs. Filmer's guest.

The letters begin to worry him, to get on his nerves, to give him for some reason that he cannot quite determine a harassing feeling of self-reproach. They are inordinately long; they consist from beginning to end of a recital of passages-at-arms between Alice and her parents; they seem to hint, when in replies to them he tries to reason away the troubles, that it is all very well for Young Wriford, who is out of it all and free and comfortable and happy, but that if he were here—!

"Well, but what more can I do than I am doing?" Young Wriford cries aloud to himself on receipt of such a letter; and thenceforward that question and alternate fits of impatience and of self-reproach over it, and letters expressive first of one frame of mind and then, in remorse, of the other—thenceforward these occupy more and more of his thoughts, and more and more mix with his work and disturb his peace of mind. Why is all this put upon him? Why can't he be left alone?

V

Here is Young Wriford in love. She is eighteen. Her name is Brida. She is working for the stage at a school of dramatic art quite close to Gamber's. He gets to know her through a friend at Gamber's whose sister is also at the school. Young Wriford and Brida happen to lunch every day—meeting without arrangement—at the same tea-shop off the Strand. She leaves her school at the same hour he leaves Gamber's in the evening, and they happen to meet every evening—without arrangement—and he walks home with her across St. James's Park to a Belgravia flat where she lives with her married sister. Young Wriford thinks of her face, day and night, as like a flower—radiant and fresh and fragrant as a flower at dawn; and of her spirit as a flower—gay as a posy, fragrant as apple-blossom, fresh as a rose, a rose!

And so one Friday evening as they cross the Park together, when suddenly she challenges his unusual silence with: "I say, you're jolly glum to-night," he replies with a plump: "I'm going to call you Brida."

"Oh, goodness!" says Brida and begins to walk very fast.

"Do you mind?"

She shakes her head.

"Don't let's hurry. Stop here a moment."

It is dusk. It is October. There is no one near them. He begins to speak. His eyes tell her what he can scarcely say: her eyes and that which tides in deepest colour across her face inform him what her answer is. He takes her in his arms. He tells her: "I love you, darling. Brida, I love you." She whispers: "Phil!"

He goes home exalted in his every pulse by what he has drunk from her lips: plumed, armed, caparisoned by that ethereal draught for any marvels, challenging the future to bring out its costliest, mightiest, bravest, best—he'd have it, he'd wrest it for his sweet, his darling! He goes home—and there is Alice waiting for him. Can't he, oh, can't he come down to Surbiton to-night, Friday, instead of waiting till to-morrow? She simply cannot bear it down there without him. It's all right when he is there. When she's alone with her mother, her mother goes on and on and on about the expenses, and about the children, and seems to throw the blame on Bill, and she answers back, and her father joins in, and there they are—at it! There's been a worse scene than ever to-day. She can't face meeting them at supper without Phil. "Phil, you'll come, won't you?"

Here is Young Wriford twisting his hands and twisting his brows, as often in later years he comes to twist them. He had planned to spend all to-morrow and Sunday with Brida—not go to Surbiton at all this week-end. Now he must go to-night. Why? Why on earth should this kind of thing be put on him? He tries to explain to Alice that he cannot come—either to-day or to-morrow. She cries. He lets her cry and lets her go—doing his best to make her think him not wilfully unkind. Here he is left alone in torment of self-reproach and of anger at the position he is placed in. Here he is with the self-reproach mastering him, and writing excuses to Brida, and hurrying to catch a train that will get him down to Surbiton in time for supper. Here is Dragon Mrs. Filmer greeting him with: "Well, this is unexpected! You couldn't of course have sent a line saying you were coming to-night instead of to-morrow! Oh, no, I mustn't expect that! My convenience goes for nothing in my own house nowadays. I call it rather hard on me." Here is Mr. Filmer, with his face exactly like a sheep, who replies at supper when Young Wriford lets out that he has been to a theatre-gallery during the week: "Well, I must say some people are very lucky to be able to afford such things. I'm afraid they don't come our way. We have a good many mouths to feed in this household, haven't we, Alice, h'm, ha?"

Here is Young Wriford in bed, pitying himself, reproaching himself, thinking of Brida, thinking of the Filmers, thinking of old Bill, thinking of Alice, thinking of his work ... pitying himself; hating himself for doing it; in a tangle; in a torment....

VI

Here is Young Wriford beginning to chafe at Gamber's. Here he is beginning to find himself—wanting to do better work than the heavy hand of Mr. Occshott will admit to the popular pages of Gamber periodicals; and beginning to lose himself—feeling the effect of many different strains; growing what Brida calls "nervy"; slowly changing from ardent Young Wriford to "nervy" Mr. Wriford.

The different strains all clash. There is no rest between them nor relief in any one of them. They all involve "scenes"—scenes with Brida, who has left the dramatic school and is on the London stage, who thinks that if Young Wriford really cared tuppence about her he would give up an occasional Sunday to her—but no, he spends them all at Surbiton and when he does come near her is "nervy" and seems to expect her to be sentimental and sorry for him; scenes with the Filmers and even with Alice because now when he comes down to them he doesn't, as they tell him, "seem to think of their dull lives" but wants to shut himself up and work at the novel or whatever it is that he is writing; scenes with Mr. Occshott when he brings Mr. Occshott the "better work" that he tries to do during the week-ends and at night and is told that he is wasting his time doing that sort of thing.

Is he wasting his time? Yes, he is wasting it at Gamber's, he tells himself. He can do better work. He wants to do better work. No scope for it at Gamber's, and one day he has it out with Mr. Occshott. Mr. Occshott hands back to him, kindly but rather vexedly, a series of short stories which is of the "better work" he feels he can do. Young Wriford sends the stories to a rival magazine of considerably higher standard than Gamber's, purposely putting upon them what seems to him an outrageous price. They are accepted.

That settles it. Young Wriford goes to Mr. Occshott. "I'm sorry, sir—awfully sorry. I've been very happy here. You've been awfully good to me. But I want to do bet—other work. I'm going to resign."

Mr. Occshott is extraordinarily kind. Young Wriford finds himself quite affected by all that Mr. Occshott says. Mr. Occshott is not going to let Gamber's lose Young Wriford at any price. "Is it money?" he asks at last.

"Yes, it's money—partly," Young Wriford tells him. "But I don't want you to think I'm trying to bounce a rise out of you."

"My dear chap, of course I don't think so," says Mr. Occshott. "You're getting five pounds a week. What's your idea?"

"I think I ought to be making four hundred a year," says Wriford.

"So do I," says Mr. Occshott and laughs. "All right. You are. Is that all right?"

Young Wriford is overwhelmed. He had never expected this. He hesitates. He almost agrees. But it is only, as he had said, "partly" a question of money. It is the better work that really he wants. It is the constant chafing against the Gamber limitations that really actuates him. He knows what it will be if he stays on. He is quite confident of himself if he resists this temptation and leaves. He says: "No. It's awfully good of you—awfully good. But it's not only the question of money"; and then he fires at Mr. Occshott a bombshell which blows Mr. Occshott to blazes.

"I'm writing a novel," says Young Wriford.

"Oh, my God!" says Mr. Occshott and covers his face with his hands.

There is no room in any well-regulated popular periodical office for a young man who is writing a novel. It is over. It is done. Good-bye to Gamber's!

VII

And immediately the catastrophe, the crash; the springing upon Young Wriford of that which finally and definitely is to catch him and hunt him and drive him from the Young Wriford that he is to the Mr. Wriford that he is to be; the scene that follows when he tells Alice and the Filmers what he has done.

He tells them enthusiastically. In this moment of his first release from Gamber's to pursue the better work that he has planned, he forgets the depression that always settles upon him in the Surbiton establishment, and speaks out of the ardour and zest of successes soon to be won that, apart from the joy of telling it all to some one, makes him more than ever grudge this weekend visit when work is impossible. He finishes and then for the first time notices the look upon the faces of his listeners. He finishes, and there is silence, and he stares from one to the other and has sudden foreboding at what he sees but no foreboding of that which comes to pass.

Alice is first to speak. "Oh, Phil," says Alice—trembling voice and trembling lips. "Oh, Phil! Left Gamber's!"

Then Mr. Filmer. "Well, really!" says Mr. Filmer. "Well, really—h'm, ha!"

Then Mrs. Filmer. "This I did not expect. This I refuse to believe. Left Gamber's! I cannot believe anything so hard on me as that. I cannot."

Young Wriford manages to say: "Well, why not?" and at once there is released upon him by Mr. and Mrs. Filmer the torrent that seems to him to last for hours and hours.

Why not! Is he aware that they were awaiting his arrival this very week-end to tell him what it had become useless to suppose he would ever see for himself? Why not! Does he realise that the expenses of feeding and clothing and above all of educating Bill's children are increasing beyond endurance month by month as they grow up? Why not! Has he ever taken the trouble to look at the boys' clothes, at their boots, and to realise how his brother's children have to be dressed in rags while he lives in luxury in London? Has he ever taken the trouble to do that? Perhaps his lordship who can afford to throw up a good position will condescend to do so now; and Mrs. Filmer takes breath from her raving and rushes to the door and bawls up the stairs: "Harold! Fred! Dicky! Come and show your clothes to your kind uncle! Come and hear what your kind uncle has done! Harold! Freddie—!"

Young Wriford, seated at the table, his head in his hands: "Oh, don't! Oh, for God's sake, don't!"

"Don't!" cries Mrs. Filmer. "No, don't let you be troubled by it! It's what our poor devoted Alice has to see day after day. It's what Mr. Filmer and I have to screw ourselves to death to try to prevent."

"And their schooling," says Mr. Filmer. "And their schooling, h'm, ha."

Schooling! This settles their schooling, Mrs. Filmer cries. They'll have to leave their day-schools now. He'll have the pleasure of seeing his brother's children attending the board-school. Three miserable guineas a week he's been contributing to the expenses, and was to be told to-day it was insufficient, and here he is with the news that he has left Gamber's! Here he is—

"Good God!" cries Young Wriford. "Good God, why didn't you tell me all this before?" and then, as at this the storm breaks upon him again, gets to his feet and cries distractedly: "Stop it! Stop it!" and then breaks down and says: "I'm sorry—I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. It's come all of a blow at me, all this. I never knew. I never dreamt it. It'll be all right. If you'll let me alone, I swear it'll be all right. The three guineas won't stop. I've arranged to do two weekly articles for Gamber's for three guineas on purpose to keep Alice going. I can get other work. There's other work I've heard of—only I wanted to do better—of course that doesn't matter now. Look here, if the worst comes to the worst, I'll go back to Gamber's. They'll take me back if I promise to give up the work I want to do. I'm sorry. I never realised. I never thought about all that. I'm sorry."

He is sorry. That, both now and for the years that are to come, is his chief thought—his daily, desperate anxiety: sorry to think how he has let his selfish ideas of better work, his thoughts of marrying Brida, blind him to his duty to devoted Alice and to old Bill's kids. Think of her life here! Think of those poor little beggars growing up and the education they ought to have, the careers old Bill would have wished them to enter! He is so sorry that only for one sharp moment does he cry out in utter dread at the proposal which now Mrs. Filmer, a little mollified, fixes upon him.

"In any case," says Mrs. Filmer, "whatever you manage to do or decide to do, you'd better come and live here. You can live far more cheaply here than letting a London landlady have part of your income."

Only for one sharp moment he protests. "I couldn't!" Young Wriford cries. "I couldn't work here. I simply couldn't."

"You can have a nice table put in your bedroom," says Mrs. Filmer. "If you're really sorry, if you really intend to do your duty by your brother's children—"

"All right," says Young Wriford. "It's very kind of you. All right."

VIII

He does not return to Gamber's. He is one of the lucky ones. The great daily newspaper, the Intelligence, has a particular fame for its column of leaderettes and latterly is forever throwing out those who write them in search of one who shall restore them to their old reputation (recently a little clouded). Young Wriford puts in for the post and gets it and holds it and soon couples with it much work on the literary side of the paper. There is a change in the proprietorship of the penny evening paper, the Piccadilly Gazette, bringing in one who turns the paper upside down to fill it with new features. Young Wriford puts in specimens of a column of facetious humour—"Hit or Miss"—and it is established forthwith, and every morning he is early at the Piccadilly Gazette office to produce it.

Thus within a very few weeks of leaving Gamber's and of coming to live at Surbiton, he is earning more than twice as much as he had relinquished—proving himself most manifestly one of the lucky ones, and earning the money and the reputation at cost to himself of which only himself is aware.

He is from the house at seven each morning to reach the Piccadilly Gazette by eight, hunting through the newspapers as the train takes him up for paragraphs wherewith to be funny in "Hit or Miss." There are days, and gradually they become more frequent, when nothing funny will come to his mind; when his mind is hopelessly tired; when his column is flogged out amid furious protests, and expostulations informing him that he is keeping the whole damned paper waiting; when he leaves the office badly shaken, cursing it, hating it, dreading that this day's work will earn him dismissal from it, and hurries back to the "nice table" in his bedroom at Surbiton, there desperately to attack the two weekly articles for Gamber's, the book-reviewing for the Intelligence and the work upon his novel: that "better work," opportunity for which had caused him to leave Mr. Occshott and now is immeasurably harder to find.

He gets into the habit of trying to enter the house noiselessly and noiselessly to get to his room. He comes back to the house trying to forget his misgiving about his "Hit or Miss" column and to force his mind to concentrate on the work he now has to do: above all, trying to avoid meeting any one in the house, which means, if he succeeds, avoiding "a scene" caused by his overwrought nerves. He never does succeed. There is always a scene. It is either irritation with Alice or with one of the boys who delay him or interrupt him, and then regret and remorse at having shown his temper; or it is a scene of wilder nature with Dragon Mrs. Filmer or with Mr. Filmer. Whatever the scene, the result is the same—inability for an hour, for two hours, for all the morning, properly to concentrate upon his work.

It will be perhaps the matter of his room. The servant is making the bed, or it isn't made, and he knows he will be interrupted directly he starts.

Pounce comes Dragon Mrs. Filmer.

"Well, goodness knows I leave the house early enough," says Young Wriford.

"Goodness knows you do," says Mrs. Filmer. "Breakfast at half-past six!"

"I never get it."

"You're never down for it."

Young Wriford, face all twisted: "Oh, what's the good! We're not talking about that. It's about my room."

Mrs. Filmer, lips compressed: "Certainly it's about your room, and perhaps you'll tell me how the servants—"

Young Wriford: "All I'm saying is that I don't see why my room shouldn't be done first."

Mr. Filmer (attracted to the battle): "I'm sure if as much were done for me as is done for you in this establishment—h'm, ha."

Alice (come to the rescue): "You know, Philip, you said you thought you wouldn't get back till lunch this morning."

Young Wriford, staring at them all, feeling incoherent, furious ravings working within him, with a despairing gesture: "Oh, all right, all right, all right! I'm sorry. Don't go on about it. Just let me alone. I'm all behindhand. I'm—"

In this mood he begins his work. This is the mood that has to be fought down before any of the work can be successfully done. Often a day will reward him virtually nothing. He is always behindhand, always trying to catch up. At six he rushes from the house to get to the Intelligence office. He is rarely back again to bed by one o'clock: from the house again at seven.

IX

Now the thing has Young Wriford and rushes him: now grips him and drives him, now marks him and drops him as he takes it. Now the years run. Now to the last drop the Young Wriford is squeezed out of him: Mr. Wriford now. Now men name him for one of the lucky ones. Now, as he lies awake at night, and as he trembles as he walks by day, he hates himself and pities himself and dreads himself.

Now the years run—flash by Mr. Wriford—bringing him much and losing him all; flash and are gone. Now he might leave the Filmer household and live again by himself. But there is no leaving it, once he is of it. Alice wants him, and he tells himself it is his duty to stay by her. His money is wanted, and there never leaves him the dread of suddenly losing his work and bringing them all to poverty. Now he gives up other work and is of the Intelligence alone, handsomely paid, one of the lucky ones. It gives him no satisfaction. It would have thrilled Young Wriford, but Young Wriford is dead. Now there is no pinching in the Surbiton establishment, decided comfort rather. The boys are put to good schools and shaped for good careers. The establishment itself is moved to larger and pleasanter accommodation. Alice is grateful, the boys are happy, even the Filmers are grateful. That Young Wriford who sat in the train with Alice coming down from Liverpool eight years before and planned so enthusiastically and schemed so generously would have been happy, proud, delighted to have done it all. But that Young Wriford is dead. Mr. Wriford spends nothing on himself because he wants nothing—interests, tastes other than work, are coffined in Young Wriford's grave. Mr. Wriford just produces the money and begs—nervily as ever, nay, more nervily than before—to be let alone to work; he is always behindhand.

Now the novel is at last written and is published and flames into success. Imagine Young Wriford's amazed delight! But Young Wriford is dead. Mr. Wriford, one of the lucky ones, lucky in this as in all the rest, contracts handsomely for others and at once is in the rush of fulfilling a contract; that is all.

Now Alice is taken sick—mortally sick. Lingers a long while, wants Mr. Wriford badly to sit with her and wants him always, is only upset by her mother. Young Wriford would have nursed her and wept for her. Mr. Wriford nurses her very devotedly, as she says, but in long hours grudged from his work, as he knows. And has no tears. What, are even tears buried with Young Wriford? Mr. Wriford believes they are and hates himself anew and thousandfold that he has no sympathy, and often in remorse rushes home from the nightly fight with the Intelligence to go to Alice's bedside and make amends—not for active neglects, for there have been none—but for the secret dryness of his heart while he is with her and his thoughts are with his work. These are stirrings of Young Wriford, but of what avail stirrings within the tomb?

Alice dies. Here is Mr. Wriford by her death caught anew and caught worse in the meshes that entangle him. Remorse oppresses him at every thought of neglect of her and unkindness to her through these years. It can only be assuaged by new devotion to her boys and to her parents, much changed and stricken by her loss. He might leave this household now. He feels it is his duty to remain in it. They want him.

The thing goes on—swifter, fiercer, dizzier, and more dizzily yet. No one notices it. He's young, that's all they notice, not yet thirty, very youthful in the face, one of the lucky ones: that's all they notice. It goes on. He hides it, has to hide it. Can't bear that any of its baser manifestations—nerves, nervousness, shrinking—should be noticed. This is the stage of shunning people—of avoiding people's eyes that look, not at him, but into him and laugh at him. It goes on. He surprises himself by the work he does—always believes that this which has brought him merit, that which has named him one of the lucky ones anew, never can be equalled again; yet somehow is equalled; yet ever, as looking back he believes, at cost of greater effort, with touch less sure. This is the stage of beginning to expect that one day there will be an end, an explosion, all the fabric of his life and his success cant on its rotten foundations and come crashing.

Now the years run. The Intelligence people conceive The Week Reviewed: Mr. Wriford forms it, executes it, launches it, carries it to success, and the more energy he devotes to it the less has to resist the crumbling of his foundations. One of the lucky ones—one that has reached the stage of conscious effort to perform a task, drives himself through it, finishes it trembling, and only wants to get away from everybody to hide how he trembles, and only wants to get to bed where it is dark and quiet, and only lies there turning from tangle to tangle of his preoccupations, counting the hours that refuse him sleep, crying to himself as he has been heard to cry: "Oh, I say, I say, I say! This can't go on! This must end! This must end!"

Thus, thus with Mr. Wriford, and worse and worse, and worse and worse. Thus through the years and thus arrived where first we found him. Behold him now, ten years from when Young Wriford, just twenty, met Alice and the children at Liverpool and ardently and eagerly and fearlessly planned his tremendous plans. That boy is dead. Return to him, little over thirty, everywhere successful, one of the lucky ones, that is come out of the grave where Young Wriford lies. Worse and worse! There is nothing he touches but brings him success; there is no one he meets or who speaks of him but envies him; and successful, lucky, it is only by throwing himself desperately into his work that he can forget the intolerable misery that presses upon him, the desire to wave his arms and scream aloud: "You call me lucky! Oh, my God! Oh, can't anybody see I'm going out of my mind with all this? Oh, isn't there anybody who can understand me and help me? Oh, I say, I say, I say, this can't go on. This must stop. This must end."

X

You see, he can't get out of it. In these years his unceasing work, his harassing work, his fears of it breaking down and bringing all who are dependent upon him to misery, and all his distresses of mind between the one and the other—all this has killed outlets by which now he might escape from it and has chained him hand and foot and heart and mind in the midst of it. His nephews leave him one by one to go out into the world, successfully equipped and started by his efforts. He is always promising himself, as first Harold goes, and then Fred and then Dick, who has chosen for the Army and enters Sandhurst, that now he will be able to change his mode of life and seek the rest and peace he craves for. He never does. He never can.

He never can. There is always a point in his work on his paper or with his books first to be reached: and when it is reached, there is always another. Now, surely, with Dick soon going out to India, he might leave the Filmers. They are comfortably circumstanced on their own means; the house is his and costs them nothing. Surely now, he tells himself, he might break away and leave them: but he cries to himself that for this reason and for that he cannot—yet: and he cries to himself that if he could, he knows not how he could. Everything in life that might have attracted him is buried ten years' deep in Young Wriford's grave. Brida could rescue him, he believes, and he tries Brida on that afternoon which has been seen: ah, like all the rest, she laughs at him—one of the lucky ones!

He is chained to himself, to that poor, shrinking, hideous devil of a Mr. Wriford that he has been made: and this is the period of furious hatred of that self, of burying himself in his work to avoid it, of sitting and staring before him and imagining he sees it, of threatening it aloud with cries of: "Curse you! Curse you!" of scheming to lay violent hands upon it.

CHAPTER III
FIGURE OF WRIFORD

I

There comes that day when Mr. Wriford went to Brida in desperate search of some one who should understand him and give him peace. It is a week after Dick has been shipped to join his regiment in India, and after a week alone with the Filmers, and of knowing not, even now that his responsibilities are finally ended, how to get out of it all—yet. It was his press-night with The Week Reviewed, as he had told Brida, and Mr. Wriford, with two articles to write, called upon himself for the effort to write them and to get his paper away by midnight—the weekly effort to "pull through"—and somehow made it.

Press-nights nowadays were one long, desperate grip upon himself to keep himself going until, far distant in the night and through a hundred stresses of his brain, the goal of "pulled through" should be reached. A hundred stresses! He always told himself, as the contingencies of the night heaped before him, that this time he would shirk this one, delegate that one to a subordinate. He never did. Fleet Street said of The Week Reviewed—a new thing in journalism—that Mr. Wriford was "IT." Unique among politico-literary weeklies in that it went to press in one piece in one day, and thus from first page to last presented a balance of contents based upon the affairs of the immediate moment, unique in that it was illustrated, in that it had at its command all the resources of the Intelligence, in that its price was two-pence—unique in all this, it was said by those who knew that The Week Reviewed's very great success was more directly due to the fact that it was saturated and polished in every article, every headline, every caption, by Mr. Wriford's touch. He would never admit how much of it he actually wrote himself; it only was known to all who had a hand in the making of it that nothing of which they had knowledge went into the paper precisely in the form in which it first came beneath Mr. Wriford's consideration. Sometimes, in the case of articles written by outside contributors of standing, members of his staff would remonstrate with him in some apprehension at this mangling of a well-known writer's work.

"Well, what does it matter whom he is?" Mr. Wriford would cry. "I don't mind people thinking things in the paper are rotten, if I've passed them and thought them good. But I'm damned if I let things go in that I know are rotten, just because they're written by some big man. I don't mind my own judgment being blamed. But I'm not going to hear criticism of anything in my paper and know that I made the same criticism myself but let it go. Satisfy yourself! That's the only rule to go by."

Therefore on this press-night as on every press-night—but somehow with worse effect this night than any—behold Mr. Wriford satisfying himself, and in the process whirling along towards the state that finds him sick and dizzy and trembling when at last the paper has gone to press and once more he has pulled through. Behold him shrinking lower in his chair as the night proceeds, smoking cigarettes in the way of six or seven puffs at each, then giddiness, and then hurling it from him with an exclamation, and then the craving for another if another line is to be written, and then the same process again; stopping in his work in the midst of a sentence, in the midst of a word, to examine a page sent down from the composing-room; twisting himself over it to satisfy himself with it; rushing up-stairs with it to where, amid heat and atmosphere that are vile and intolerable to him, the linotype machines are rattling with din that is maddening to him, to satisfy himself that the page has not been rushed to the foundry without his emendations; there, a hundred times, sharp argument that is infuriating to him with head-printer and machine-manager who battle with time and are always behind time because advertisements and blocks are late, and now, as they say, he must needs come and pull a page to pieces; down to his room again, and more and worse interruptions that a thousand times he tells himself he is a fool not to leave in other hands and yet will attend to to satisfy himself; time wasted with superior members of his staff who come to write the final leaders on the last of the night's news and who are affected by no thought of need for haste but must wait and gossip till this comes from Reuter's or that from The Intelligence's own correspondent; time wasted over the line they think should be taken and the line to which Mr. Wriford, to satisfy himself, must induce them. Sometimes, thus occupied with one of these men, Mr. Wriford—a part of his mind striving to concentrate on the article he was himself in the midst of writing, part concentrating on the page that lay before him waiting to be examined, part on the jump in expectation of a frantic printer's boy rushing in for the page at any moment, and the whole striving to force itself from these distractions and fix on the subject under discussion—sometimes in these tumults Mr. Wriford would have the impulse to let the man go and write what he would and be damned to him, or the page go as it stood and be damned to it, or his own article be cancelled and something—anything to fill—take its place. But that would not be satisfying himself, and that would be present relief at the cost of future dissatisfaction, and somehow Mr. Wriford would make the necessary separate efforts—somehow pull through.

II

Somehow pull through! In the midst of the worst nights, Mr. Wriford would strive to steady himself by looking at the clock and assuring himself that in three hours—two hours—one hour—by some miracle the tangle would straighten itself, and he would have pulled through and the paper be gone to press, as he had pulled through and the paper been got away before. So it would be to-night—but to-night! "If I dropped dead," said Mr. Wriford to himself, standing in his room on return from a rush up-stairs to the composing-room, and striving to remember in which of his tasks he had been interrupted, "if I dropped dead here where I am and left it all unfinished, we should get to press just the same somehow. Well, let me, for God's sake, fix on that and go leisurely and steadily as if it didn't matter. I shall go mad else; I shall go mad." But in a moment he was caught up in the storm again and satisfying himself—and somehow pulling through. At shortly before midnight he was rushing up-stairs with the last page of his own article, and remaining then in the composing-room that sickened him and dazed him, himself to make up the last two forms—correcting proofs on wet paper that would not show the corrections and maddened him; turning aside to cut down articles to fit columns; turning aside to scribble new titles or to shout them to the compositors who stood waiting to set them; turning aside to use tact with the publisher's assistant who was up in distraction to know what time they were ever likely to get the machines going; turning aside to send a messenger to ask if that last block was ever coming; calculating all the time against the clock to the last fraction of a second how much longer he could delay—forever turning aside, forever calculating; deciding at last that the late block must not be waited for; peering in the galley racks to decide what should fill the space that had been left for it; selecting an article and cutting it to fit; at highest effort of concentration scanning the pages that at last were in proof—then to the printer: "All right; let her go!" Pulled through! And the heavy mallets flattening down the type no more than echoes of the smashing pulses in his brain....

Pulled through! dizzily down-stairs. Pulled through! and too sick, too spent, too nerveless, to exchange words with those of his staff who had been up-stairs with him and were come down, thanking heaven it was over. Pulled through! and too spent, too finished, to clear up the litter of his room as he had intended—capable only of dropping into his chair and then, realising his state, of calling upon himself in actual whispers: "Wriford! Wriford! Wriford!" but no responding energy.

III

He began to think of going home and began to think of the task of taking down his coat from behind the door and of the task of getting into it. He began to think of the paper that had just gone to press and began in his mind to go slowly through it from the first page, enumerating the title of each article and of each picture. Somewhere after half-a-dozen pages he would lose the thread and find himself miles away, occupied with some other matter; then he would start again.

It was towards one o'clock when he realised that if he did not move, he would miss a good train at Waterloo and have a long wait before the next. He decided against the effort of taking down and getting into his coat. He took up his hat and stick and left the building by the trade entrance at the back, meeting no one. He followed his usual habit of walking to Waterloo along the Embankment, and it was nothing new to him—for a press-night—that occasionally he found he could not keep a straight course on the pavement. Too many cigarettes, he thought. He crossed to the river side, and when he was a little way from Waterloo Bridge, a more violent swerve of his unsteady legs scraped him roughly against the wall. He had no control then, even over his limbs! and at that realisation he stopped and laid his hands on the wall and looked across the river and cried to himself that frequent cry of these days: "Wriford! Wriford! Wriford!"

The wall was rough to his hands, and that produced the thought of how soft his hands were—how contemptibly soft he was all over and all through. "Wriford! Wriford! Wriford!" cried Mr. Wriford to himself and had a great surge through all his pulses that seemed—as frequently in these days but now more violently, more completely than ever before—to wash him asunder from himself, so that he was two persons: one within his body that was the Wriford he knew and hated, the other that was himself, his own, real self, and that cried to his vile, his hateful body: "Wriford! Wriford! Wriford!"

Intolerable—past enduring! Mr. Wriford jumped upwards, suspending his weight on his arms on the wall, and by the action was dispossessed of other thought than sudden recollection of exercises on the horizontal bar at school; seemed to be in the gymnasium, and saw the faces of forgotten school-fellows who were in his gym set waiting their turn. Then the Embankment again and realisation. Should he drop back to the pavement? "Wriford! Wriford! Wriford!" He mastered that vile, damned, craven body and threw up his right leg and scrambled and pitched himself forward; was conscious of striking his thigh violently against the wall, and at the pain and as he fell, thought: "Ha, that's one for you, damn you! I've got you this time! Got you!" And then was in the river, and then instinctively swimming, and then "Drown, damn you! Drown!" cried Mr. Wriford and stopped the action of his arms, and went down swallowing and struggling, and came up struggling and choking, and instinctively struck out again.

Shouts and running feet on the Embankment. "Drown, damn you! Drown, drown!" cried Mr. Wriford; went down again, came up facing the wall, and in the lamplight and in the tumult of his senses, saw quite clearly a bedraggled-looking individual peering down at him and quite clearly heard him call: "Nah, then. Nah, then. Wot yer up to dahn there?"

Shouts and running feet on the police pier not thirty yards away; sounds of feet in a boat; and then to Mr. Wriford's whirling, smashing intelligence, the sight of a boat—and what that meant.

Mr. Wriford thrust his hands that he could not stop from swimming into the tops of his trousers and twisted his wrists about his braces. "Drown, damn you! Drown!" cried Mr. Wriford, and the whirling, smashing scenes and noises lost coherence and only whirled and smashed, and then a hand was clutching him, and coherence returned, and Mr. Wriford screamed: "Let me go! Let me go!" and freed an arm from the entanglement of his braces and dashed it into the face bending over him and with his fist struck the face hard.

"Shove him under," said the man at the oars. "Shove him under. He'll 'ave us over else...."

Mr. Wriford was lying in the boat. "Let me go," cried Mr. Wriford. "Let me go. You're hurting me."

"You've hurt me, you pleader," said the man, but relaxed the knuckles that were digging into Mr. Wriford's neck.

Mr. Wriford moaned: "Well, why couldn't you let me drown? Why, in God's name, couldn't you let me drown?"

"Not arf grateful, you beggars ain't," said the man; and presently Mr. Wriford found himself pulled up from the bottom of the boat and handed out on to the police landing-stage to a constable with: "'Old 'im fast, Three-Four-One. Suicide, he is. 'Old 'im fast."

Three-Four-One responded with heavy hand ... conversation.... Mr. Wriford standing dripping, sick, cold, beyond thought, presently walking across the Embankment and up a street leading to the Strand in Three-Four-One's strong grasp.

"Where are you taking me?" said Mr. Wriford.

"Bow Street," said Three-Four-One.

"Let me go!" sobbed Mr. Wriford.

"Not arf," said Three-Four-One.

Then a police whistle, shouts, running feet. Round the corner two men racing at top speed into Mr. Wriford and Three-Four-One, and Mr. Wriford and Three-Four-One sent spinning. All to earth, and the two runners atop, and a pursuing constable, unable to stop, upon the four of them. Blows, oaths, struggles.

Mr. Wriford rolled free of the pack and got to his feet, viewed a moment the struggle in progress before him, then turned down the side-street whence the pursuit had come, and ran; doubled up to the Strand and across the Strand and ran and ran and ran; glanced over his shoulder and saw one running, not after him, but with him—wet as himself and very like himself. "What do you want?" gasped Mr. Wriford. The figure made no reply but steadily ran with Mr. Wriford, and Mr. Wriford recognised him and stopped. "You're Wriford, aren't you?" cried Mr. Wriford, and in sudden paroxysm screamed: "Why didn't you drown? Why didn't you drown when I tried to drown you, curse you?" and in paroxysm of hate struck the man across his face. He felt his own face struck but felt hurt no more than when he had bruised his thigh in leaping from the Embankment wall. "Come on, then!" cried Mr. Wriford. "Come on, then, if you can! I'll make you sorry for it, Wriford. Come on, then!"

And Mr. Wriford turned again, and with the figure steadily beside him, ran and ran and ran and ran and ran.

CHAPTER IV
ONE RUNS: ONE FOLLOWS

I

Most dreadful pains of distressed breathing, of bursting heart and of throbbing head, afflicted Mr. Wriford as he ran. He laboured on despite them. He forgot, too, that he had started running to escape arrest and had run on—across the Strand, up Kingsway, through Russell Square, across the Euston road and still on—in terror of pursuit. All that possessed him now was fear and hatred of the one that ran steadily at his elbow, whom constantly he looked at across his shoulder and then would try to run faster, whom presently he faced, halting in his run and at first unable to speak for the agonies of his exertions.

Then Mr. Wriford said gaspingly: "Look here—you're not to follow me. Do you understand?" and then cried, with sobbing breaths: "Go away! Go away, I tell you!"

In the rays that came from an electric-light standard near which they stood, Figure of Wriford seemed only to grin in mock of these commands.

Mr. Wriford waited to recover more regular breathing. Then he said fiercely: "Look here! Look across the road. There's a policeman there watching us. D'you see him? Well, are you going to leave me, or am I going to give you in charge? Now, then!"

Figure of Wriford only looked mockingly at him; and first there came to Mr. Wriford a raging impulse to strike him again, and then the knowledge that the policeman was watching; and then Mr. Wriford stepped swiftly across the road to carry out his threat; and then, as he approached the policeman, had a sudden realisation of the spectacle he must present—clothes dripping, hat gone, collar ripped away—and for fear of creating a scene, changed his intention. But his first impulse had brought him right up to the policeman. He must say something. He knew he was in the direction of Camden Town. He said nervously, trying to control his laboured breathing: "Can you tell us the way to Camden Town, please?"

II

This chanced to be a constable much used to the oddities of London life and, by many years of senior officer bullying and magisterial correction, cautious of interference with the public unless supported by direct Act of Parliament. He awaited with complete unconcern the bedraggled figure whose antics he had watched across the road, and in reply to Mr. Wriford's hesitating: "We want to get to Camden Town. Can you tell us the way, please," remarked over Mr. Wriford's head and without bending his own: "Well, you've got what you want. It's all round you," and added, indulging the humour for which he had some reputation: "That's a bit of it you're holding down with your feet."

Mr. Wriford looked at Figure of Wriford standing by his side. He looked so long with hating eyes, and was so long occupied with the struggle to brave fear of a scene and give the man in charge for following him, that he felt some further explanation was due to the policeman before he could move away.

"Thanks," said Mr. Wriford. "Thank you, we rather thought we'd lost our way."

The policeman unbent a little and exercised his humour afresh. "Well, we've found it right enough," said he. "What are us, by any chance? King of Proosia or Imperial Hemperor of Wot O She Bumps?"

The constable's facetiousness was of a part with those slights to his dignity from inferiors which always caused Mr. Wriford insufferable humiliation. It angered him and gave him courage. "Take that man in charge," cried Mr. Wriford sharply. "He's following me. I'm afraid of him. Take him in charge."

"What man?" said the constable. "Don't talk so stupid. There's no man there."

"That man," cried Mr. Wriford. "Are you drunk or what? Where's your Inspector?"

The constable, roused by this behaviour: "My Inspector's where you'll be pretty sharp, if I have much more of it—at the station! Now, then! Coming to me with your us-es and your we-es! 'Op off out of it, d'ye see? 'Op it an' quick."

Mr. Wriford stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment and then screamed out: "I tell you that man's following me. What's he following me for? He's followed me miles. I'm afraid of him. Send him off. Send him away."

The constable tucked his gloves in his belt and caught Mr. Wriford strongly by the shoulder. "Now, look here," said the constable, "there's no man there, and if you go on with your nonsense, you're Found Wandering whilst of Unsound Mind, that's what you are. You're asking for it, that's what you're doing, and in less than a minute you'll get it, if you ain't careful. Why don't you behave sensible? What's the matter with you? Now, then, are you going to 'op it quiet, or am I going to take you along?"

All manner of confusing ideas whirled in Mr. Wriford's brain while the constable thus addressed him. How, if he went to the Police Station, was he going to explain who this man was that was following him? The man was himself—that hated Wriford. Then who was he? Very bewildering. Very difficult to explain. Best get out of this and somehow give the man the slip. He addressed the constable quietly and with a catch at his breath: "All right. It's all right. Never mind."

The constable released him. "Now do you know where you live?"

"Yes, I know; oh, I know," Mr. Wriford said.

"Got some one to look after you, waiting up for you?"

"Yes—yes."

"Goin' to 'op it quiet?"

"Yes—yes. It's all right."

"Not goin' to give nobody in charge?"

Mr. Wriford stood away and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He said miserably: "No, it's all right. Only a bit of a quarrel. It's nothing. We'll go on. We're all right."

"Well, let me see you 'op it," said the policeman.

"All right," said Mr. Wriford. "All right," and he walked on, still just catching his breath a little, and puzzling, and watching out of the corner of his eyes Figure of Wriford who came on beside him.

III

He walked on through Camden Town and through Kentish Town, Figure of Wriford at his elbow. Sometimes he would glance at Figure of Wriford and then would begin to run. Figure of Wriford ran with him. Sometimes he would stop and stand still. Figure of Wriford also stopped, halting a little behind him. Once as he looked back at Figure of Wriford, he saw a newspaper cart overtaking them, piled high with morning papers, driving fast. Mr. Wriford stepped off the pavement and began to cross the road. He judged very exactly the distance at which Figure of Wriford followed him. When Figure of Wriford was right in the cart's way, and he a pace or two beyond it, he suddenly turned back and rushed for the pavement again.

"Now you're done for!" he shouted in Figure of Wriford's face; but it was himself that the shaft struck a glancing blow, staggering him to the path as the horse was wrenched aside; and he was dizzied and scarcely heard the shouts of abuse cursed at him by the driver, as the cart went on and he was left groaning at the violent hurt and shock he had suffered, Figure of Wriford beside him.

IV

Mr. Wriford walked on and on, planning schemes of escape as he walked, and presently thought of one. He was by now at Highgate Archway, and following the way he had pursued, came upon the road that runs through Finchley to Barnet and so in a great highway to the country beyond. Now early morning and early morning's solitude had given place to the warmth and opening activities of five o'clock—labourers passed to their work, occasional tram-cars, scraping on their overhead wires, came from Barnet or ran towards it. Mr. Wriford was glad of the sun. His running until he met the policeman had overcome the chill of his immersion in the river. Since then, he had felt his soaked clothing clinging about him, and his teeth chattered and he shivered, very cold. His exertions had run the water off him. Now the strong sun began to dry him. Gradually, as he went on, the shivering ceased to mingle with his breathing and only came to shake him in spasmodic convulsions, very violent. But his breathing remained in catching sobs, and that was because of his fear and hate of the one that trod at his elbow, and of effort and resolution on the plan that should escape him.

He began, as he approached the signs that indicated halting-stations for the tram-cars, to hurry past them, and when he was beyond a post, to dally and look behind him for an overtaking car. Several he allowed to pass. They were travelling too slowly for his purpose, and Figure of Wriford was watching him very closely. He came presently to a point where the road began to descend gently in a long and straight decline.

Here cars passed very swiftly, and as one came speeding while he was between halting-stations, Mr. Wriford bound up his purpose and launched it. The car whizzed up to them; Mr. Wriford, looking unconcernedly ahead, let it almost pass him, then he struck a savage blow at Figure of Wriford and made a sudden and a wild dash to scramble aboard. The pole on the conductor's platform was torn through his hands that clutched at it; he grasped desperately at the back rail, stumbled, was dragged, clung on, got a foot on the step, almost fell, grabbed at the pole, drew himself aboard, and threw himself against the conductor who had rushed down from the top and, with one hand clutched at Mr. Wriford, with the other was about to ring the bell.

Mr. Wriford's onset threw him violently against the door, and Mr. Wriford, collapsed against him, cried: "Don't ring! Don't stop!" and then turned and at what he saw, screamed: "Don't let that man get on! Don't let him! Throw him off! Throw him off! I tell you, throw him—" But the conductor, very angry, shaken in the nerves and bruised against the door, hustled Mr. Wriford within the car, and Mr. Wriford saw Figure of Wriford following on the heels of their scuffle; collapsed upon a seat and saw Figure of Wriford take a place opposite him; began to moan softly to himself and could not pay any attention to the conductor's abuse.

"Serve you right," said the conductor very heatedly, "if you'd broke your neck. Jumpin' on my car like that. Serve you to rights if you'd broke your neck. Nice thing for me if you had, I reckon. I reckon it's your sort what gets us poor chaps into trouble." He held on to an overhead strap, swayed indignantly above Mr. Wriford, and obtaining no satisfaction from him—sitting there very dejectedly, twisting his hands together, little moans escaping him, tears standing in his eyes—directed his remarks towards the single other passenger in the car, who was a very stout workman and who, responding with a refrain of: "Ah. That's right," induced the conductor to reiterate his charge in order to earn a full measure of the comfort which "Ah. That's right" evidently gave him.

"Serve you right if you'd broke your neck," declared the conductor.

"Ah. That's right," agreed the stout workman.

"Your sort what gets us chaps into trouble, I reckon."

"Ah. That's right," the stout workman affirmed.

"Nice thing for me an' my mate," declared the conductor, "to go before the Coroner. Lose a day's work and not 'arf lucky if we get off with that."

"Ah. That's right," said the stout workman and spat on the floor and rubbed it in with a stout boot, and as if intellectually enlivened by this discharge, varied his agreement to: "That's right, that is. Ah."

"Serve you right—" began the conductor again, and Mr. Wriford, acted upon by his persistence, said wearily: "Well, never mind. Never mind. I'm all right now."

"Well, I reckon you didn't ought to be," declared the conductor. "Not if I hadn't come down them steps pretty sharp, you didn't ought."

The stout workman: "Ah. That's right."

Now the conductor suddenly produced his tickets and sharply demanded of Mr. Wriford: "Penny one? Reckon you ought to pay double, you ought."

Mr. Wriford as suddenly roused himself, looked across at Figure of Wriford seated opposite, and as sharply replied: "I'm not going to pay for him! I won't pay for him, mind you!"

The conductor followed the direction of Mr. Wriford's eyes, looked thence towards the stout workman, and then turned upon Mr. Wriford with: "Pay for yourself. That's what you've got to do."

"Ah. That's right," agreed the workman.

Mr. Wriford, breathing very hard, paid a penny, and receiving his ticket, watched the conductor very feverishly while he said: "Takes you to Barnet," and while at last he turned away and stood against the entrance. Then Mr. Wriford pointed to where Figure of Wriford sat and cried: "Where's that man's ticket?"

The conductor looked at the stout workman and tapped himself twice upon the forehead.

"Ah. That's right," said the stout workman; and thus supported, the conductor, no less a humourist than the policeman of an hour before, informed Mr. Wriford, with a wink at the stout workman: "He don't want no ticket."

Mr. Wriford appealed miserably: "Oh, why not? Why not?"

"He rides free," said the conductor. "That's what he does," and while the stout workman agreed to this with his usual formula, Mr. Wriford rocked himself to and fro in his corner and said: "Oh, why did you let him on? Why did you let him on? I asked you not to. Oh, I asked you."

This caused much amusement to the conductor and the stout workman, and at Barnet the conductor very successfully launched two shafts of wit which he had elaborated with much care. As Mr. Wriford alighted, "Wait for your friend," the conductor said, and as Mr. Wriford paused with twisting face and then set off up the road, turned for the stout workman's appreciation and discharged his second brand. "Reckon he ought to ha' bin on a 'Anwell[[1]] car," said the conductor.

[[1]] Hanwell is the great lunatic asylum of London.

"Ah. That's right," said the stout workman.

V

Mr. Wriford passed through Barnet and walked on to the open country beyond, and still on and on throughout the day. He halted neither for rest nor refreshment. Night came, and still he walked. He had no thought of sleep, but sleep stole upon his limbs. He stumbled on a grassy roadside, fell, did not rise again, and slept. The hours marched and brought him to new day. He awoke, looked at Figure of Wriford who sat wide-eyed beside him, said "Oh—oh!" and walking all day long, said no other word.

Dusk of the second evening stole across the fields and massed ahead of him. Mr. Wriford's progression was now no more than a laboured dragging of one foot and a slow placing it before the other. He came at this gait over the brow of a hill, and it revealed to him one at whose arresting appearance and at whose greeting Mr. Wriford for the first time stopped of his own will and stood and stared, swaying upon his feet.

CHAPTER V
ONE IS MET

This was a somewhat tattered gentleman, very tall, seated comfortably against the hedge, long legs stretched before him, one terminating in a brown boot of good shape, the other in a black, through which a toe protruded. This gentleman was shaped from the waist upwards like a pear, in that his girth was considerable, his shoulders very narrow, and his head and face like a little round ball. He ate, as he reclined there, from a large piece of bread in one hand and a portion of cold sausage in the other; and he appeared to be no little incommoded as he did so, and as Mr. Wriford watched him, by a distressing affliction of the hiccoughs which, as they rent him, he pronounced hup!

"Hup!" said this gentleman with his mouth full; and then again "hup!" He then cleared his mouth, and regarding Mr. Wriford with a jolly smile, upraised the sausage in greeting and trolled forth in a very deep voice and in the familiar chant:

"'O all ye tired strangers of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him for ever'—hup!

"But you can't do that," continued the pear-shaped gentleman, "when the famine has you in the vitals and the soreness in the legs, as it has you, unless you've practised it as much as I have. Then it is both food and rest. In this wise—

"Hup!—O all ye hungry of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and hup-nify Him for ever.

"Hunger, I assure you," said the pear-shaped gentleman, "flee-eth before that shout as the wild goat before the hunter. Hunger or any ill. I have known every ill and defeated them all. Selah!"

There was about this unusual gentleman that which doubly attracted Mr. Wriford. The Mr. Wriford of a very few days ago, who avoided eyes, who shrank from strangers, would hurriedly and self-consciously have passed him by. The Mr. Wriford with whom Figure of Wriford walked was attracted by the pear-shaped gentleman's careless happiness and attracted much more by his last words. He came a slow step nearer the pear-shaped gentleman, looked at Figure of Wriford, and from him with eyes that signalled secrecy to the pear-shaped gentleman, and in a low voice demanded: "You have known every ill? Have you ever been followed?"

The pear-shaped gentleman stared curiously at Mr. Wriford for a moment. Then he said: "Not so much followed, which implies interest or curiosity, as chased—which betokens vengeance or heat. With me that is a common lot. By dogs often and frequently bitten of them. By farmers a score time and twice assaulted. By—"

"Have you ever been followed by yourself?" Mr. Wriford interrupted him.

The pear-shaped gentleman inclined his head to one side and examined Mr. Wriford more curiously than before. "Have you come far?" he inquired.

"From Barnet," said Mr. Wriford.

"Spare us!" said the pear-shaped gentleman with much piety. "Long on the road?"

Mr. Wriford looked at Figure of Wriford, and for the first time since the event on the Embankment cast his mind back along their companionship. It seemed immensely long ago; and at the thought of it, there overcame Mr. Wriford a full and a sudden sense of his misery that somehow unmanned him the more by virtue of this, the first sympathetic soul he had met since he had fled—since, as somehow it seemed to him, very long before his flight. He said, with a break in his voice and his voice very weak: "I don't know how long we've been. We've been a long time."

The pear-shaped gentleman inclined his head with a jerk to the opposite side and took a long gaze at Mr. Wriford from that position. He then said: "How many of you?"

Mr. Wriford, a little surprise in his tone: "Why, just we two."

"Hup!" said the pear-shaped gentleman, said it with the violence of one caught unawares and considerably startled, and then, recovering himself, directed upon Mr. Wriford the same jolly smile with which he had first greeted him, and again upraising the sausage, trolled forth very deeply:

"O all ye loonies of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever."

The pear-shaped gentleman then jumped to his feet with an agility very conspicuous in one of his girth, and of considerable purpose, in that he had no sooner obtained his balance on his feet than Mr. Wriford lost his balance upon his feet, swayed towards the arms outstretched to him, was assisted to the hedgeside, and there collapsed with a groan of very great fatigue.

The pear-shaped gentleman on his knees, busying himself with a long bottle and a tin can taken from the grass, with a clasp knife, the cold sausage, and the portion of bread: "I will have that groan into a shout of praise before I am an hour nearer the grave or I am no man. Furthermore," continued the pear-shaped gentleman, filling the can very generously and assisting it very gently to Mr. Wriford's lips, "furthermore, I will have no man groan other than myself, who groaneth often and with full cause. Your groan and your countenance betokeneth much misery, and I will not be bested by any man either in misery or in any other thing. I will run you, jump you, wrestle you, drink you, eat you, whistle you, sing you, dance you—I will take you or any man at any challenge; and this I will do with you or any man for—win or lose—three fingers of whisky, the which, hup! is at once my curse and my sole delight. Selah!"

As he delivered himself of these remarkable sentiments, the pear-shaped gentleman cut from the sausage and the bread the portions to which his teeth had attended, conveyed these to his own mouth, which again became as full as when Mr. Wriford had first seen it, and pressed the remainders upon Mr. Wriford with a cordiality much aided by his jolly speech and by the tin can of whisky which now ran very warmly through Mr. Wriford's veins. These combinations, indeed, and the sight and then the taste of food awakened very ferociously in Mr. Wriford the hunger which had now for two days been gathering within him. He ate hungrily, and, in proportion as his faintness became satisfied, something of an irresponsible light-headedness came to him; he began to give little spurts of laughter at the whimsicality of the pear-shaped gentleman and for the first time to forget the presence of Figure of Wriford; he accepted with no more reluctance than the same nervous humour a final absurdity which, as night closed about them, and as his meal was finished, the pear-shaped gentleman pressed upon him.

"I can hardly keep awake," said Mr. Wriford and lay back against the hedge.

The pear-shaped gentleman answered him from the darkness: "Well, this is where we sleep—a softer couch than any of your beds, and I have experienced every sort. The painful eructations which, to my great though lawful punishment, my proneness for the whisky puts upon me, are now, hup! almost abated, and I, too, incline to slumber."

Mr. Wriford said sleepily: "You've been awfully kind."

"I have conceived a fancy for you," said the pear-shaped gentleman. "I like your face, boy. I call you boy because you are youthful, and I am older than you: in sin, curse me, as old as any man. I also call you loony, which it appears to me you are, and for which I like you none the worse. As an offset to the liberty, you shall call me by any term you please."

Mr. Wriford scarcely heard him. "Well, I'd like to know your name," said he.

"Puddlebox," said the pear-shaped gentleman; and to Mr. Wriford's little spurt of sleepy laughter replied: "A name that I claim to be all my own, for I will not be beat at a name, nor at any thing, as I have told you, by any man."

To this there was but a dreamy sigh from Mr. Wriford, and Mr. Puddlebox inquired of him: "Sleepy?"

"Dog-tired," said Mr. Wriford.

"Happy?"

"I'm all right," said Mr. Wriford.

"Well, then, you are much better, loony," said Mr. Puddlebox. He then put out a hand in the darkness, and touching Mr. Wriford's ribs, obtained his fuller attention. "You are much better," repeated Mr. Puddlebox, "and if you will give me your interest for a last moment, we will continue in praise the cure which we have begun very satisfactorily in good whisky, cold sausage, and new bread. A nightly custom of mine which I suit according to the circumstances and in which, being suited to you, you shall now accompany me."

"Well?" said Mr. Wriford, aroused, and laughed again in light-hearted content. "Well?"

"Well," said Mr. Puddlebox, "thusly," and trolled forth very deeply into the darkness:

"O all ye loonies of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever."

"Now you," said Mr. Puddlebox.

Mr. Wriford protested with nervous laughter: "It's too ridiculous!"

"It's wonderfully comforting," said Mr. Puddlebox; and Mr. Wriford laughed again and in a voice that contrasted very thinly with the volume of Mr. Puddlebox's gave forth as requested:

"O all ye loonies of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever."

"Scarcely body enough," adjudged Mr. Puddlebox, "but that will come with appreciation of its value. Now one other, and this time touching that friend of yours whom I name Spook. We have starved him to his great undoing, for you have fed while he has hungered, and his bowels are already weakened upon you. We will now further discomfort him with praise. This time together—O all ye Spooks. Now, then."

"It's absurd," said Mr. Wriford. "It's too ridiculous"; but in the midst of his laughter at it had a sudden return to Figure of Wriford who was the subject of it and cried out: "Oh, what shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?"

"Why, there you go!" cried Mr. Puddlebox. "There's the necessity of it. Fight against him, boy. Let him not beat you, nor any such. Quick now—O all ye—"

And Mr. Wriford groaned, then laughed in a nervous little spurt, then groaned again, then weakly quavered while Mr. Puddlebox strongly belled:

"O all ye spooks of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever."

"Feel better?" questioned Mr. Puddlebox.

In the darkness only some stifled sounds answered him.

"Crying, loony?"

Only those sounds.

Mr. Puddlebox put out a large hand, felt for Mr. Wriford's hands and clasped it upon them. "Hold my hand, boy."

Sleep came to them.

CHAPTER VI
FIGHTING IT: TELLING IT

This was a large, fat, kindly and protective hand in whose comfort Mr. Wriford slept, beneath which he awoke, and whose aid he was often to enjoy in immediate days to come. Yet its influence over him was by no means always apparent. Increasing acquaintance with Mr. Puddlebox was needed for its development, and this had illustration in the manner of his first sleep by Mr. Puddlebox's side.

Thus at first Mr. Wriford, clutching like a child at the hand which came to him in the darkness, and no little operated upon by intense fatigue, by the whisky, and by the meal of cold sausage and bread, slept for some hours very soundly and without dreams. Next his state became troubled. His mind grew active while yet his body slept. Very disturbing visions were presented to him, and beneath them he often moaned. They rode him hard, and ridden by them he began to find his unaccustomed couch first comfortless and then distressing. A continuous, tremendous, and rasping sound began to mingle with and to be employed by his visions. He sat up suddenly, threw off Mr. Puddlebox's hand in bewildered fear of it, then saw that the enormous raspings proceeded from Mr. Puddlebox's nose and open mouth, and then remembered, and then saw Figure of Wriford seated before him.

Mr. Wriford caught terribly at his breath and with the action drew up his knees. He placed his elbows on them and covered his face with his hands. He pressed his fingers together, but through their very flesh he yet could see Figure of Wriford quite plainly, grinning at him. Hatred and fear gathered in Mr. Wriford amain. With them he drew up all the fibres of his body, drew his heels closer beneath him, prepared to spring fiercely at the intolerable presence, then suddenly threw his hands from him and at the other's throat, and cried aloud and sprung.

He struggled. He fought. Figure of Wriford was screaming at him, and in that din, and in the din of bursting blood within his brain, he heard Mr. Puddlebox also shouting at him strangely. "Glumph him, boy," Mr. Puddlebox shouted. "Glumph him, glumph him!" And there was Mr. Puddlebox hopping bulkily about him as he fought and struggled and staggered, and desperately sickened, and desperately strove to keep his feet.

"Help me!" choked Mr. Wriford. "Help me! Help me! Kill him! Kill! Kill!"

"Kill yourself!" came Mr. Puddlebox's voice. "You're killing yourself! You're killing yourself! Why, what the devil? You're fighting yourself, boy. You're fighting yourself. Loose him, boy! Loose him! You've got him beat! Loose him now, loose him—Ooop!"

This bitter cry of "Ooop!" unheeded by Mr. Wriford, was shot out of agony to Mr. Puddlebox's black-booted foot, upon the emerging toes of which Mr. Wriford's heel came with grinding force. "Ooop!" bawled Mr. Puddlebox and hopped away upon the shapely brown boot, the other foot clutched in his hands, and then "Ooop!" again—"Ooop! Erp! Blink!" For there crashed upon his nose a smashing fist of Mr. Wriford's arm, and down he went, blood streaming, and Mr. Wriford atop of him, and Mr. Wriford's head with stunning force against a telegraph pole, thence to an ugly stone.

Stillness then of movement; and of sounds only immense gurgling and snuffling from Mr. Puddlebox, lamentably engaged upon his battered nose.

Mr. Wriford sat up. He pressed a hand to his head and presently, his chest heaving, spoke with sobbing breaths. "You might have helped me," he sobbed. "You might have helped me."

From above his dripping nose, Mr. Puddlebox regarded him dolorously. He had no speech.

"You might have helped me," Mr. Wriford moaned.

"Glug," said Mr. Puddlebox thickly. "Glug. Blink!"

"When you saw me—" Mr. Wriford cried.

"Glug," said Mr. Puddlebox. "Blink! Helped you!" he then cried. "Why, look what the devil I have helped you! Glug. If I have bled a pint, I have bled a quart, and at this flood I shall ungallon myself to death. Glug. Blink. Why, I was no less than a fool ever to come near you. Might have helped you! Glug!"

Mr. Wriford's common politeness came to him. With some apology in his tone, "I don't know how you got that," he said. "I only—"

Mr. Puddlebox, very woefully from behind a blood-red cloth: "I don't know how I shall ever get over it." But he was by now a little better of it, the flow somewhat staunched, and he said with a vexation that he justified by glances at the soaking cloth between dabs of it at his nose: "Why, I helped you in all I could. You fought like four devils. I was in the very heart of it.

"I heard you," said Mr. Wriford, "shouting 'Glumph him!' or some such word. It was no help to—"

Mr. Puddlebox returned crossly. "Glumph him! Certainly I—glug. Blink! There it is off again. Glug. Certainly I shouted glumph him. A glumph is a fat hit—a hit without art or science, and the only sort of which I am capable, or you, either, as I saw at a glance. Glug."

"I was fighting," said Mr. Wriford. "I was being killed, and you—"

"Why, I was being killed also," returned Mr. Puddlebox. "Look at my foot. Look at my nose. Fighting! Why, there never was such senseless fighting—never. Glug. Blink! Why, beyond that you fought with me whenever I came near you, who to the devil do you think you were fighting with?"

Mr. Wriford looked at him with very troubled eyes. After a little while, "Why, tell me whom," he said. "I want to know." His voice ran up and he cried: "It's not right! I want to know."

"Why, loony," said Mr. Puddlebox kindly, suddenly losing his heat and his vexation, "why, loony, you were fighting yourself."

"Yes," Mr. Wriford answered him hopelessly. "Yes. That's it. Myself that follows me," and he moaned and wrung his hands, rocking himself where he sat.

Mr. Puddlebox supported his nose with his blood-red cloth and waddled to Mr. Wriford on his knees. He sat himself on his heels and wagged a grave finger before Mr. Wriford's face. "Now look here, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox. "When I say you, I mean you—that you," and he dug the finger at Mr. Wriford's chest. "When I say fought yourself, I mean your own hands—those hands, at your own throat—that throat."

Mr. Puddlebox spoke so impressively, looking so strongly and yet so kindly at Mr. Wriford, that great wonder and trouble came into Mr. Wriford's eyes, and he put his fingers to his throat, that was red and scarred and tender, and said wonderingly, doubtfully, pitifully: "Do you mean that I did this to myself—with my own hands?"

"Why, certainly I do," returned Mr. Puddlebox, "and with your own hands this to my nose. Why, I awoke with a kick that you gave me, and there you were, dancing over there with sometimes your hands squeezing the life out of yourself, black in the face, and your eyes like to drop out, and sometimes your hands smashing at nothing except when they smashed me, and screaming at the top of your voice, and your feet staggering and plunging—why, you were like to have torn yourself to bits, but that you fell, and the pole here knocked sense into you. Like this you had yourself," and Mr. Puddlebox took his throat in his hands in illustration, "and shook yourself so," and shook his head violently and ended "Glug. Curse me. I've started it again. Glug," and mopped his nose anew.

Mr. Wriford said in horror, more to himself than aloud: "Why, that's madness!"

"Why—glug, blink!" said Mr. Puddlebox. "Why, that's what it will be if you let it run, boy. That's what will be, if you are by yourself, which you shall not be, for I like your face, and I will teach you to glumph it out of you. This is a spook that you think you see, and that is why I call you loony, and it is no more a real thing than the several things I see when the whisky is in me, as I have taught myself—glug, I shall bleed to death—as I have taught myself to know, and as I shall teach you. Wherefore we are henceforward comrades, for you are not fit to take care of yourself till this thing is out of you. We shall now breakfast," continued Mr. Puddlebox, beginning with one hand, the other kept very gingerly to his nose, to feel towards his bundle on the grass, "and you shall tell me who you are, and why you are spooked, first unspooking yourself, as last night, with praise. Come now, we will have them both together—O ye loonies and spooks—"

"I won't!" said Mr. Wriford. He sat with his hands to his chin, his knees drawn up, wrestling in a fevered mind with what facts came out of Mr. Puddlebox's jargon. "I won't!"

"It is very comforting," said Mr. Puddlebox, not at all offended. "Try breakfast first, then."

"Oh, let me alone," cried Mr. Wriford. "I don't want breakfast."

"I do," returned Mr. Puddlebox. "The more so that I have lost vast blood. There is enough whisky here to invigorate me, yet, under Providence, not to plague me with the hiccoughs. Also good cold bacon. Come, boy, cold bacon."

"I don't want it," Mr. Wriford said.

"More for me," said Mr. Puddlebox, "and I want much. While I eat, you shall tell me how you come to be loony, and I will then tell you how I come to be what I am. And I will tell a better story than you or than any man. Come now!"

An immense bite of the cold bacon then went to Mr. Puddlebox's mouth, and Mr. Wriford, looking up, found himself so jovially and affectionately beamed upon through the bite, that he suddenly turned towards Mr. Puddlebox and said: "I'll tell you. I'd like to tell you. You've been very kind to me. I've never said thank you. I'm ill. I don't know what I am."

Gratified sounds from Mr. Puddlebox's distended mouth—inarticulate for the cold bacon that impeded them, but sufficiently interpreted by quick nods of the funny little round head and by smiles.

"It's very strange to me," said Mr. Wriford in a low voice, "to be sitting here like this and talking to you. I don't know how I do it. A little while ago I was in London, and I couldn't have done it then. I never spoke to anybody that I could help—I remember that. I say I can remember that, because there are a lot of things I can't remember. I've been like that a long time. I've never told anybody before. I don't know how I tell you now—I said that just now, didn't I?" and Mr. Wriford stopped and looked at Mr. Puddlebox in a puzzled way.

Mr. Puddlebox, cheeks much distended, first shook his head very vigorously and then as vigorously nodded it. This thoughtfully left it to Mr. Wriford to choose whichever distressed him less, and he said: "In the middle of thinking of a thing it goes." There was a rather pitiful note in Mr. Wriford's voice, and he sat dejectedly in silence. When next he spoke, he shook himself, and as though the action shook off his former mood, he said excitedly, bending forward towards Mr. Puddlebox: "Look here, I've never done things! I've been shut up. I've had things to look after. I've never been able to rest. I've never been able to be quiet. There's always been something else. There's always been something all round me, like walls—oh, like walls! Always getting closer. I've never been able to stop. No peace. There's always been some trouble—something to think about that grinds me up, and in the middle of it something else. There's always been something hunting me. Always something, and always something else waiting behind that. Like walls, closer and closer. I never could get away. I tell you, every one I ever met had something for me that kept me. I wanted to scream at them to let me alone. I never could get away. I was shut up. I'm a writer. I write newspapers and books. People know me—people who write. I hate them all. I've often looked at people and hated everybody. They look at me and see what I am and laugh at me. They know I'm frightened of them. I'm frightened because I've been shut up, and that's made me different from other people. I'm a writer. I've made much more money than I want. I've looked at people in trains and places and known I could have bought them all up ten times over. And the money's never been any use to me—not when you're shut up, not when there's always something else, not when you're always trembling. I never can make people understand. They don't know I'm shut up. They don't see that there's always something else. They think—"

Mr. Wriford stopped and looked again in a puzzled way at Mr. Puddlebox and then said apologetically: "I don't know how I've come here. I don't understand it just at present. I'll think of it in a minute;" and then broke out suddenly and very fiercely: "But I tell you, although you say it isn't, and God only knows why you should interfere or what it's got to do with you, I tell you that I've had myself walking with me and want to kill it. And I will kill it! It's done things to me. It's kept me down. I hate it. It's been me for a long time. But it isn't me! I'm different. I can look back when you never knew me, and God knows how different I've been—young and happy! I want to die. If you want to know, though what the devil it's got to do with—I want to die, die, die! I want to get out of it all. Yes, now I remember. That's it. I want to get out of it all. Everything's all round me, close to me. I can scarcely breathe. I want to get out of it. I've been in it long enough. I want to smash it all up. Smash it with my hands to blazes. My name's Wriford. If you don't believe it, you can ask any one in London who knows about newspapers and books, and they'll tell you. I'm Wriford, and I want to get out of it all. I want to kill myself and get away alone. I won't have myself with me any longer! Damn him, he's a vile devil, and he isn't me at all. I'm Wriford! Good Lord, before I began all this, I used to be— He's a vile, cowardly devil. I want to get away from him and get away by myself. I want to smash it all up. With my hands I want to smash it and get away alone—alone;" and then Mr. Wriford stopped with chest heaving and with burning eyes, and then tore open his coat and then his shirt, as though his body burned and he would have the air upon it.

All this time Mr. Puddlebox had been champing steadily with mouth prodigiously filled. Now he washed down last fragments of cold bacon with last dregs of good whisky and, with no sort of comment upon Mr. Wriford's story or condition, announced: "Now I will tell you my story. That's fair. Then we shall know each other as comrades should; which, as I have said, we are to be henceforward and until I have unspooked you. Furthermore, as I also said, I will tell a better story than you—yes, or than any man, for I will take you or any man at any thing and give best to none. Selah."

CHAPTER VII
HEARING IT

"My name is Puddlebox," said Mr. Puddlebox. He settled his back comfortably against the hedge and looked with a very bright eye at Mr. Wriford, who sat bowed before him and who at this beginning, and catching Mr. Puddlebox's merry look, shook himself impatiently and averted his eyes, that were pained and troubled, to the ground, as though he would hear nothing of it and wished to be wrapped in his own concerns.

Not at all discouraged, "My name is Puddlebox," Mr. Puddlebox continued. "I was born many highly virtuous years ago in the ancient town of Hitchin, which lies not far from us as we sit. My father was an ironmonger, of good business and held in high esteem by all who knew him. My mother was an ironer, and love, which, as I have marked, will make use of any bond, perhaps attracted these two by medium of the iron upon which each depended for livelihood. My mother sang in the choir of her chapel, and my father, who sometimes preached there, has told me that she presented a very holy and beautiful picture as the sun streamed through the window and fell upon her while she hymned. Here again," continued Mr. Puddlebox, "the ingenuity of love is to be observed, for this same sunlight, though it adorned my mother, also incommoded her, and my father, in his capacity as ironmonger, was called upon to fit a blind for her greater convenience. This led to their acquaintance and, in process of lawful time, to me whom they named Eric. Little Eric. Five followed me. I was the eldest, and the most dutiful, of six. Offspring of God-fearing parents, I was brought up in the paths of diligence and rectitude—trained in the way I should go and from my earliest years pursued that way without giving my parents one single moment's heart-burning or doubt. I was, and I have ever been, a little ray of sunshine in their lives."

"You're a tramp, aren't you?" said Mr. Wriford.

On the previous evening Mr. Puddlebox had induced in Mr. Wriford a mood in which his griefs had disappeared before little spurts of involuntary laughter. The same, arising out of Mr. Puddlebox's whimsical narration of his grotesque story, threatened him now, and he resisted it. He resisted it as a vexed child, made to laugh despite himself, seeks by cross yet half-laughing rejoinders to preserve his ill-humour and not be wheedled out of it.

"You're a tramp, aren't you?" said Mr. Wriford; but Mr. Puddlebox, with no notice of the interruption, continued: "A little ray of sunshine. My dear parents in time sent me to school. Here, by my diligence and aptitude, I brought at once great shame upon my elder classmates and great pride to the little parlour behind the ironmonger's shop. It became furnished, that pleasant parlour, with my prize-books, and decorated with my medals and certificates of punctuality and good conduct. As I grew older, so the ray of sunshine which I effulged waxed brighter and warmer. My father, encouraged and advised by my teachers, offered me the choice of many lucrative and gentlemanly professions. It was suggested that I should embrace a few of the many scholarships that were at the easy command of my abilities and my industry, proceed to the University, and become pedagogue, pastor, or lawyer. I well remember, and I remember it with pride and happiness, the grateful mingling of my parents' tears when I announced that I spurned these attractions, desiring only to be apprenticed to my dear father's business, perpetuate the grand old name of Puddlebox, ironmonger, Hitchin, and become the prop and comfort of the evening of my parents' years.

"This was the time," proceeded Mr. Puddlebox, "when, in common with all youth, I was subjected to the temptations of gross and idle companions. As I had shamed my classmates at school, so I shamed my would-be betrayers in the street. They called me to the pleasures of the public-house. I pointed to the blue-ribbon badge of my pledges against intoxicating liquors. They enticed me to ribaldry, to card-playing, to laughter with dangerous women. I openly rebuked them and besought them for their own good instead to sit with me of an evening, while I read aloud from devotional works to my dear parents. My spare time I devoted to my Sunday-school class, to the instruction of my younger brothers and sisters, and to profitable reading. My recreation took the form of adorning our chapel with the arts of turnery and joinery which I had learnt together with that of pure ironmongery."

All this was more and more punctuated with spurts of laughter from Mr. Wriford, and now, laughing openly, "Well, when did all this stop?" he said.

"It never stopped," returned Mr. Puddlebox. "A calamitous incident diverted it to another train; that is all. Five sovereigns, nine shillings, and fourpence were one day found to be missing from the till. It was in the till when the shop was shut at seven o'clock one Saturday night, and it was out of the till when my father went to transfer it to the cash-box at eight o'clock. We kept no servant. No stranger had entered the house. The theft lay with one of my brothers and sisters. My father's passion was terrible to witness. That a child of his should rob his own father produced in him a paroxysm of wrath such as even I, well knowing his sternly religious nature, did not believe him capable of. With shaking voice he demanded of my brothers and sisters severally and collectively who had brought this shame upon him. All denied it. I was in an adjoining room—as horrified and as trembling as my father. I knew the culprit. I had seen a Puddlebox—a Puddlebox!—with his hand in his father's till. My long discipline in virtue and in filial and fraternal devotion told me at once what I must do. I must shield the culprit; I must take the blame upon myself."

"Why?" said Mr. Wriford.

"I did not hesitate a moment," said Mr. Puddlebox, disregarding the question. "Breathing a rapid prayer for my dear ones' protection and for the forgiveness of the culprit, I turned instantly and fled from the house. I have never seen my parents since. I have never again revisited the ancestral home of the Puddleboxes. Yet am I content and would not have it otherwise, for I am happy in the knowledge that I have saved the culprit. Since then, I have devoted my life over a wider area to the good works which formerly I practised within the municipal boundaries of beloved Hitchin. I tour the countryside in a series of carefully planned ambits, seeking, by ministration to the sick and needy, to shed light and happiness wherever I go, supporting myself by those habits of diligence and sobriety which became rooted in me in my childhood's years. You say your name is Wriford, and that you are of repute in London. My name is Puddlebox, and I am known, respected, and welcomed in a hundred villages, boroughs, and urban districts. Now that is my story," concluded Mr. Puddlebox, "and I challenge you to say that yours is a better."

Mr. Wriford was by this time completely won out of the fierce and tumultuous thoughts that had possessed him when Mr. Puddlebox began. His little spurts of involuntary laughter had become more frequent and more openly daring as Mr. Puddlebox proceeded, and now, quite given over to a nervously light-headed state such as may be produced in one by incessant tickling, he laughed outright and declared: "I don't believe a word of it!"

"Well," said Mr. Puddlebox, merrier than ever in the eye, and speaking with a curious note of triumph as though this were precisely what he had been aiming at, "Well, I don't believe a word of yours!"

"Mine's true," cried Mr. Wriford, quick and sharp, and got indignantly to his feet. Habit of thought of the kind that had helped work his destruction in him jumped at him at this, as he took it, flat insult to his face, and in the old way set him surging in head and heart at the slight to his dignity. "Mine's true!" he cried and looked down hotly at Mr. Puddlebox.

"And mine's as true," said Mr. Puddlebox equably and giving him only the same merry eye.

Mr. Wriford, heaving: "Why, you said yourself—only last night—that whisky was your curse. You've told me a lot of rubbish; you couldn't have meant it for anything else. I've told you facts. What don't you believe?"

"I don't believe any of it," said Mr. Puddlebox, and at Mr. Wriford's start and choke, added quickly: "as you tell it."

One of those sudden blanks, one of those sudden snappings of the train of thought—click! like an actual snapping in the brain—came to Mr. Wriford. One of those floodings about his mind of immense and whirling darkness in which desperately his mental eye sought to peer, and desperately his mental hands to grope. He tried to remember what it was that he had told Mr. Puddlebox. He tried to search back among recent moments that he could remember—or thought he remembered—for words he must have spoken but could not recollect. His indignation at Mr. Puddlebox's refusal to believe him disappeared before this anguish and the trembling that it gave. He made an effort to hold his own, not to betray himself, and with it cried indignantly: "Well, what did I say?" then, unable to sustain it, abandoned himself to the misery and the helplessness, and used again the same words, but pitiably. "Well, what did I say?" Mr. Wriford asked and caught his breath in a sob.

Mr. Puddlebox put that large, soft, fat, kindly and protective hand against Mr. Wriford's leg that stood over him and pulled on the trouser. "Now, look here, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox very soothingly, "sit here by me, and I will tell you what you said, and we will put this to the rights of it."

Very dejectedly Mr. Wriford sat down; very protectively Mr. Puddlebox put the large hand on his knee and patted it. "Now, look here, my loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, "I'll tell you what you said, and what I mean by saying I don't believe a word of it as you tell it. What I mean, my loony, is that there's one thing the same in your story and in mine, and it is the same in every story that I hear from folks along the road, and I challenge you or any man to hear as many as I have heard. It is that we've both been glumphed, boy. We've both led beautiful, virtuous lives and ought to be angels with beautiful wings—'stead of which, here we are: glumphed; folks have got up and given us fat hits and glumphed us.

"Well, there's two ways," continued Mr. Puddlebox with great good humour, "there's two ways of telling a glumphed story, my loony: the way of the glumphed, which I have told to you, and the way of the glumpher, which I now shall tell you. Take my story first, boy. Glumphed, which is me, tells you of a child and a boy and a youth which was the pride and the comfort and the support of his parents; glumphers, which is they, would tell you I was their shame and their despair. Glumphed: diligent, shaming his classmates, adorning the parlour with prize-books; glumphers: never learning but beneath the strap, idle, disobedient. Glumphed: spurning companions who would entice him; glumphers: leading companions astray. Glumphed: putting away nobler callings and desirous only to serve his father in the shop; glumphers: wasting his parents' savings that would educate him for the ministry, and of the shop sick and ashamed. Glumphed: reading devotional books to his mother; glumphers: breaking her heart. Glumphed: knowing the culprit who robbed his father and fleeing to save him; glumphers: himself the thief and running away from home. Glumphed: journeying the countryside in good works and everywhere respected; glumphers: a tramp and a vagabond, plagued with whisky and everywhere known to the police.

"There's a difference for you, boy," concluded Mr. Puddlebox; and he had recited it all so comically as once again to bring Mr. Wriford out of dejection and set him to the mood of little spurts of laughter. "Glumphed," Mr. Puddlebox had said, raising one fat hand to represent that individual and speaking for him in a very high squeak; and then "glumphers" with the other fat hand brought forward and his voice a very sepulchral bass. Now he turned his merry eyes full upon Mr. Wriford: and Mr. Wriford met them laughingly and laughed aloud.

"I see what you're driving at," Mr. Wriford laughed; "but it doesn't apply to me, you know. You don't suppose I've—er—robbed tills, or—well—done your kind of thing, do you?"

"I don't know what you've done," said Mr. Puddlebox. "But this I do know, that your story is the same as my story, and the same as everybody's story, in this way that you've never done anything wrong in your life, and that all your troubles are what other folks—glumphers—have done to you. Well, whoa, my loony, whoa!" cried Mr. Puddlebox, observing protest and indignation blackening again on Mr. Wriford's face. "The difference in your case is that what you've done and think you haven't done has spooked you, boy, and now I will tell you how you are spooked; and how I will unspook you. You think too much about yourself, boy. That's what is spooking you. You think about yourself until you've come to see yourself and to be followed by yourself. Well, you've got to get away from yourself. That's what you want, boy—you know that?"

"Yes, I'm followed," Mr. Wriford cried. He clutched at Mr. Puddlebox's last words; and, at the understanding that seemed to be in them, forgot all else that had been said and cried entreatingly: "I'm followed, followed!"

"I will shake him off," said Mr. Puddlebox. "You want to get away?"

"I must!" said Mr. Wriford. "I must!"

"And you don't mind what happens to you?"

"I don't mind anything."

"Why, then, cheer up," cried Mr. Puddlebox with a sudden infectious burst of spirits, "for I don't, either; and so there are two of us, and the world is full of fun for those who mind nothing. I will teach you to sing, and I will teach you to find in everything measure for my song, which is of praise and which is:

"O ye world of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever.

"Up, my loony, and I will teach you to forget yourself, which is what is the matter with you and with most of us."

Mr. Puddlebox with these words got very nimbly to his feet, and there took Mr. Wriford a sudden infection of Mr. Puddlebox's spirits, which made him also jump up and stand with this jolly and pear-shaped figure who minded nothing, and look at him and laugh in irresponsible glee. Mr. Puddlebox wore a very long and very large tail-coat, in the pockets of which he now began to stuff his empty bottle, a spare boot, what appeared to be a shirt in which other articles were rolled, and sundry other packets which he picked up from the grass about him. Upon his head he wore a hard felt hat whose rim was gone, so that it sat upon him like an inverted basin; and about his considerable waist he now proceeded to wind a great length of string. He presented, when his preparations were done, so completely odd and so jolly a figure that Mr. Wriford laughed aloud again and felt run through him a surge of reckless irresponsibility; and Mr. Puddlebox laughed in return, loud and long, and looking down the hill observed: "We will now leave this place of blood and wounds and almost of unseemly quarrel. Ascending towards us I observe a wagon, stoutly horsed. We will attach ourselves to the back of it and place ourselves entirely at its disposal; first greeting the wagoner in song, for the very juice of life is to be extracted by finding matter for praise in all things. Now, then, when he reaches us—'O ye wagoners—'"

The wagon reached them. Piled high with sacks, it was drawn by three straining horses and driven by a very burly gentleman who sat on a seat above his team and midway up the sacks and scowled very blackly at the pair who awaited him and who, as he drew abreast, gave him, Mr. Puddlebox with immense volume and Mr. Wriford with gleeful irresponsibility:

"O ye wagoners of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever!"

The wagoner's reply was to spit upon the ground for the singers' benefit and very brutally to lash his team for his own. The horses strained into a frightened and ungainly plunging, and the wagon lumbered ahead. Mr. Puddlebox plunged after it, and Mr. Wriford, with light-headed squirms of laughter, after Mr. Puddlebox. The tail-board of the wagon was not high above the road. In a very short space Mr. Wriford was seated upon it and then clutching and hauling in assistance of the prodigious bounds and scrambles with which, at last, Mr. Puddlebox also effected the climb.

And so away, with dangling legs.

BOOK TWO
ONE OF THE JOLLY ONES

CHAPTER I
INTENTIONS, BEFORE HAVING HIS HAIR CUT, OF A WAGONER

In this company, and with this highly appropriate beginning of legs dangling carelessly above the dusty highroad from a stolen seat on the tail-board of a wagon, there began to befall Mr. Wriford many adventures which, peculiar and unusual for any man, were, for one of Mr. Wriford's station in life and of his character and antecedents, in the highest degree extraordinary. His dangling legs—and the fact that he swung them as they dangled—were, indeed, emblematic of the frame of mind which took him into these adventures and which—save when the old torments clutched him and held him—carried him through each and very irresponsibly into the next. Through all the later years of his former life he had very much cared what happened to him and what people thought of him when they looked at him. He was filled now with a spirit of not caring at all. It was more than a reckless spirit; it was a conscious spirit. He had often, in the days of his torment, cried aloud that he wished he might die. He told himself now that he did not mind if he did die, and did not mind if he was hurt or what suffering befell him. Through all the later years of his former life he often had cried aloud, his brain most dreadfully surging, his panic desire to get out of it all. He told himself that he now was out of it all. He had been frantic to be free; he now was free. A very giddiness of freedom possessed him and caused him, at the dizziness of it, to laugh aloud. A very intoxication of irresponsibility filled him and caused in him a fierce lust to exercise it in feats of maddest folly. He only wanted to laugh, as before he very often had wanted to cry or scream. He only wanted to perform wild, senseless pranks, as before he only had desired to be shut away from people—by himself, alone, in the dark. All this increased with every day of the early days in Mr. Puddlebox's company. Now, as he sat beside Mr. Puddlebox on the tail-board of the wagon, and swung his legs and often laughed aloud, he sometimes reflected upon where the wagon was taking them and what would happen, and at the thought that he did not care whither or what, laughed again; and more than once looked at Mr. Puddlebox, blowing and puffing in exhaustion beside him, and scarcely could control an impulse to push him off the tail-board and laugh to see him clutch and expostulate and fall; and once struck his fist against the revolving wheel beside him and laughed aloud to feel the pain and to see his bruised and dusty knuckles.

"Loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, catching the gleaming eyes that were turned upon him in mischievous thought to push him off, "Loony, you're getting unspooked already."

"It's very jolly," said Mr. Wriford, and laughed. "I like this."

"You shall learn to like everything," said Mr. Puddlebox, "and so to be jolly always."

"How do you live?" inquired Mr. Wriford.

"Why," said Mr. Puddlebox, "by liking everything, for that is the only way to live. Sun, snow; rain, storm; heat, cold; hunger, fullness; fatigue, rest; pain, pleasure; I take all as they come and welcome each by turn or all together. They come from the Lord, boy, and that is how I take them, love them, and return them to the Lord again in form of praise. Selah."

"Dash it," said Mr. Wriford, "you might be a Salvationist, you know."

"Curse me," returned Mr. Puddlebox very cheerfully, "I am nothing of the sort. Would that I were. I will tell you what I am, boy. I am the most miserable sinner that any man could be, and I am the most miserable in this—that I know where mercy comes from, which most poor sinners do not and therefore am less miserable than I. I have outraged my parents, and I outrage heaven in every breath I draw, particularly when, as, curse me, too often it is, my breath is whisky-ladened: which thing is abominable to the nose of godliness and very comfortable to my own. I know where mercy comes, loony, on the one hand because I was trained for the ministry, and on the other because I see it daily with my eyes. I know where mercy comes, yet I never can encompass it, for my flesh is ghastly weak and ghastly vile and, curse me, I have worn it thus so long that I prefer it so. But if I cannot encompass mercy, boy, I can return thanks for it; and if it comes in form of scourge—cold, hunger, pain, they are the three that fright me most—why, I deserve it the more surely and return it in praise the more lustily. That is how I live."

Many days hence it was to befall Mr. Wriford—in very bitter lesson, in hour of deepest anguish—to know a certain beauty in this odd testament of faith.

Just now, of his dizzy mood and of the teller's merry eye as he told it, little more than its whimsicality touched him; and when it was done, "Well, but that doesn't feed you," he said. "In that way—feeding and clothing and the rest of it—how do you live in that way?"

"Why, much in the same," returned Mr. Puddlebox. "Taking what comes, and if need be, which it is my constant prayer it need not, turning my hand to work, of which there is plenty. There is bread and raiment in every house, some for asking, some for working, and always some to get rid of me when I begin to work. What there is not in every house, boy, is whisky, and it is for that my brow has to sweat when, as now, my bottle is empty. But there are," continued Mr. Puddlebox, beginning to wriggle in his seat and draw up his legs with the evident intention of standing upon them, "there are, happily, or, curse me, unhappily, other ways of getting whisky; and the first is never to lose an opportunity of looking for it."

Mr. Puddlebox's feet were now upon the tail-board and he was clutching at the sacks, in great exertion to stand upright.

"What now?" inquired Mr. Wriford, beginning to laugh again.

"Why, to look for it," said Mr. Puddlebox. "In every new and likely place I always look for whisky. If none, I sing very heartily 'O ye disappointments' and am the better both for the praise and for the fact there is none. If some, I am both grateful and, curse me, happy. The top of these sacks is a new place, my loony, and a very likely. Our kind coachman, as I observed, wore no coat and had no bundle, nor were these beside him. They are likely on top."

"I'll come with you," said Mr. Wriford. "It's a devil of a climb."

"It's a devil of a prize," responded Mr. Puddlebox, "if it's there."

It proved to be both the one and the other. The sacks, stacked in ridges, provided steps of a sort, but each was of prodigious height, of very brief foothold, and the sacks so tightly stuffed as to afford but a scraping, digging hold for the fingers. When to these difficulties was added the swaying of the whole as the wagon jolted along, there was caused on the part of the climbers much panic clutching at each other, at the ropes which bound the sacks, and at the sacks themselves, together with much blowing and sounds of fear from Mr. Puddlebox, vastly incommoded by his bulging coattails, and much hysterical mirth from Mr. Wriford, incommoded no little by laughter at the absurdity of the escapade and at imagination of the grotesque spectacle they must present as they swarmed.

He was first to reach the summit. "By Jove, there's a coat here, anyway!" he cried.

Mr. Puddlebox bulged up and plunged forward on his face with a last convulsive scramble. "And, by my sins, a bottle!" cried Mr. Puddlebox, drawing the coat aside. "Beer, I fear me—a filling and unsatisfactory drink." He drew the cork and applied his nose. "Whisky!" and applied his mouth.

"Good Lord!" cried Mr. Wriford, astonished at a thought that came to him with the length of Mr. Puddlebox's drink. "Man alive! Do you drink it neat?"

"Hup! Curse me," said Mr. Puddlebox, "I do. It takes less room. Hup! This is the most infernal torment, this hupping. I must, but I never can, drink more, hup! slowly. As a rule," continued Mr. Puddlebox, balancing on his knees and fumbling in his coattail pockets, "as a rule I never rob a man of his bottle. If a man has a bottle, he has an encouragement towards thrift and sobriety. It is a persuasion to put his whisky there instead of at one draught into his mouth. For the moment I must suspend the by-law. I cannot decant this gentleman's whisky into my own bottle, for our carriage shakes and would cause loss. And I cannot exchange for this bottle my own, for to mine I am deeply attached. Therefore—" Mr. Puddlebox fumbled the bottle into his pocket, appeared to find some difficulty in accommodating it, produced it again and took another drink from it and, as if this had indeed diminished its bulk, this time slid it home, where Mr. Wriford heard it clink a greeting with its empty fellow. "Therefore," said Mr. Puddlebox—"hup!"

"Well, mind they don't break," said Mr. Wriford. "Let's have a look where we're getting to," and he squirmed himself on elbows and knees towards the front of the sacks and stretched out, face downwards.

"I never yet," said Mr. Puddlebox proudly, "committed the crime of breaking a bottle." From his knees he took an observation down the road ahead of him, announced: "We are getting towards the pretty hamlet of Ditchenhanger," and coming forward lay full length by Mr. Wriford's side.

This position brought their heads, overhanging the sacks, immediately above the wagoner seated a long arm's length below them, his horses walking, the reins slack in his hands and himself, to all appearances, in something of a doze. A very large man, as Mr. Wriford had previously noticed, with prodigious arms, bare to the elbow; and at his unconsciousness of their presence, hanging immediately above him, and at his sullen face and the rage upon it if he knew, Mr. Wriford was moved to silent squirms of laughter, and turned a laughing face to Mr. Puddlebox's, suspended over the sacks beside him.

"Hup!" said Mr. Puddlebox with shattering violence.

The wagoner started not less violently, looked about him with jerking, savage head, while Mr. Wriford held his breath and dared not move, uttered an oath of extraordinarily unsavoury character, grabbed at his whip, and lashed with all the force of his arm at his horses.

The nature of their response exercised a very obvious result upon the wagon. It suffered a jerk that caused from Mr. Wriford a frantic clutch at the sacks and from Mr. Puddlebox a double explosion that cost him (as he afterwards narrated) very considerable pain.

"Huppup!" said Mr. Puddlebox. "Blink! Hup!" and with this his pudding-bowl hat detached itself from his head and dropped lightly into the wagoner's lap. That gentleman immediately produced another oath, compared with which his earlier effort was as a sweet smelling rose at dewy morn, drew up his unfortunate team even more violently than he had urged them forward, with very loud bellows bounded to the road and, whip in hand, completed a very rapid circuit of his wagon, bawling the while a catalogue of astoundingly blood-curdling intentions which he proposed to wreak upon somebody before, as he phrased it, he had his blinking hair cut.

His passengers, considerably alarmed at these proceedings, withdrew to the exact centre of the sacks and there reflected, each in the other's face, his own dismay.

"Now you've done it, you silly ass," said Mr. Wriford.

"It's not over yet," said Mr. Puddlebox. "I'm afraid this is going to be very rough."

CHAPTER II
PASSIONATE ATTACHMENT TO LIVER OF A WAGONER

"You're up there, ain't yer?" demanded the wagoner, arrived at the other side of the wagon and bawling from the road. "You're up there, aren't yer? I've got you, my beauty! I'll cut your liver out for yer before I have my blinkin' hair cut! I've got you, my beauty! You're up there, aren't yer?"

Mr. Puddlebox poked his head very timidly over the side, looked down upon their questioner, and remarked in a small thin voice: "Yes—hup!" He then drew back very hastily, for at sight of him the wagoner with a very loud bellow rushed forward and smote upward with his whip in a manner fully calculated, to the minds of his passengers, to cut up a sack or lay open a liver with equal precision. "Come down off out of it!" bellowed this passionate gentleman, flogging upward with appalling whistle and thud of his lash. "Come down off out of it. I'll cut your liver out, my beauty! I'll cut your coat off your back, before I have my blinkin' hair cut."

Perceiving that the angry lash fell safely short of its aim, Mr. Puddlebox again protruded his head.

"Now are you coming down," demanded the flaming wagoner, "or am I coming up for you?"

"I should like to explain—" began Mr. Puddlebox.

"I'll explain you!" roared the wagoner. "I'll explain you, my beauty! Are you coming down off out of it?"

"What are you going to do if I do come?" inquired Mr. Puddlebox.

The carter, in a voice whose violence seemed likely to throttle him, announced as his intention that he proposed to cut out Mr. Puddlebox's liver with his whip and then, having extracted it, to dance upon it.

"Well, I won't come," said Mr. Puddlebox. "In that case, I think I'll stay here," he said, and said it with a nervous little giggle that shot out of the wagoner an inarticulate bellow of fury and a half-dozen of terrific blows towards Mr. Puddlebox's anxious face.

"Come down off out of it!" bellowed the carter. "I'll cut your liver out before I have my blinkin' hair cut, my beauty."

The same nervous giggle again escaped the unfortunate beauty whose liver was thus passionately demanded. "But your hair doesn't want cutting," said Mr. Puddlebox, "really—hup!"

"You fool!" Mr. Wriford cried. "You utter fool!" and in dramatic illustration of Mr. Puddlebox's folly, the wagon began to shake with the violence of the wagoner's ascent of it, and there preceded the ascent, increasing in horror as it approached, an eruption of astoundingly distressing oaths mingled in the most blood-curdling way with references to liver and other organs which were to be subjected at one and the same time to step-dances and to a ferocious orgy of surgical and cannibalistic practices.

Mr. Wriford was frightened. There went out of him the reckless glee in mad adventure that had possessed him on the wagon till now. There returned to him, dreadfully as if a hand within him were tugging at his vitals, twirling in his brain, drumming in his heart, the coward fear that well of old he knew.

"Down!" cried Mr. Puddlebox. "Down behind, loony! quick!" and began to scramble backwards.

There came to Mr. Wriford some odd experiences. He looked at Mr. Puddlebox and saw in the little round face where usually was merriment, alarm, white and sickly. Then saw Mr. Puddlebox's eyes search his own, and waver, and then fill with some purpose. Then was pulled and pushed backward by Mr. Puddlebox. Then both were hanging, half over the sacks, half on top. Then over the front of the wagon before them appeared the wagoner's cap and a vast arm clutching the whip. Then Mr. Puddlebox scrambled forward a yard, placing himself between Mr. Wriford and the approaching fury. "Down you go, loony; he's not seen you. Hide yourself, boy." Then Mr. Puddlebox's elbow and then his knee at Mr. Wriford's chest, and Mr. Wriford was slithered down the sacks and fallen in the road.

Now from above, and before yet Mr. Wriford could get to his feet, very quick things. Baleful howl from the flaming wagoner standing on his driver's seat and towering there in omnipotent command of the wagon-top. Appalling whistle-wup of the whip in his mighty and ferocious hand. Pitiful yelps from Mr. Puddlebox, head and shoulders exposed, baggy stern, surmounted by the bulging pockets, suspended above Mr. Wriford in the road and wriggling this way and that as the whip fell. Baleful howl from the flaming wagoner and the whistle-wup! at each loudest word of it: "Now, my beauty, I've GOT yer!"

Pitiful yelp from Mr. Puddlebox: "Yowp! Hup!"

"Now I'll CUT your liver out for yer."—"Yeep! Hup!"

"Before I have my BLINKIN' 'air cut."—"Yowp!"

"Now I'll CUT your liver out, my beauty."—"Yowp! Yeep! Hup! Hell!"

Beneath the blows and the convulsive wrigglings they caused, Mr. Puddlebox's stern slipped lower down the sacks. Mr. Wriford scrambled to his feet from where he was fallen to the road. He was utterly terrified. He turned to run. He stopped, and a cry of new fear escaped him. Figure of Wriford stood there.

Mr. Wriford put a hand before his eyes and went a few steps to the side of the wagon and stopped again, irresolute.

There came from above again that bellow, again whistle-wup! of the whip, again from Mr. Puddlebox in agonized response: "Yowp! Hup!"

Mr. Wriford cried aloud: "Oh, why doesn't he drop down?"

It seemed to him that Figure of Wriford turned upon him with flaming eyes and grinding teeth and for the first time spoke to him: "Why, to give you time to get away and hide—to save you, you filthy coward!"

Mr. Wriford cried: "Oh—oh!"

And at once a dramatic change of scene. In one sudden and tremendous bound the flaming wagoner hurled himself from the seat to the road, rushed bawling around his wagon on the opposite side from where Mr. Wriford trembled, came full beneath the hanging stern of Mr. Puddlebox, and discharged upon it a cut of his whip that made pretty caresses of his former efforts. "Now I've got you, my beauty!"

With a loud and exceeding bitter cry, the beauty released his hold. As thunders the mountain avalanche, so thundered he. As falls the stricken oak so, avalanched, the flaming wagoner fell beneath him.

There was a very loud crash of breaking bottles, and immediately upon the hot summer air a pungent reek of whisky. There were enormous convulsions of Mr. Puddlebox and the wagoner entwined in one great writhing double monster prone in the roadway, and from them a tremendous cloud of dust. There were thuds, oaths, yawps, yeeps, bellows, and with them the pleasant music of broken bottles jangling. The double monster came to its four knees and writhed there; very laboriously—as if it were a rheumatic giant—writhed to its four legs and there stood and writhed amain; divided suddenly, and there was an appalling wallop from one to the other, and Mr. Puddlebox went reeling, musically jangling, and the flaming wagoner, carried round by the wallop's impetus, came staggering sideways a pace towards Mr. Wriford.

Mr. Wriford put down his head and shut his eyes and rushed at him. Mr. Wriford, as he rushed, saw Figure of Wriford disappear as if swallowed. Mr. Wriford caught his foot in the wheel, was discharged like a butting ram at the backs of the flaming wagoner's knees, clutched, wrenched, was down with the bawling wagoner beating at his head, and then, clutching and struggling, was overturned beneath him. Mr. Wriford heard a yell, first of warning, then of triumph, from Mr. Puddlebox: "Keep out of it, loony! Well done, boy! Well done! Glumph him, boy! Glumph him!" There was a terrible run and kick from Mr. Puddlebox, and a terrible jerk and cry from the flaming wagoner, and in the next moment Mr. Wriford was on his feet and taking share, his eyes mostly shut, in a whirlwind, three-sided battle that spun up the road and down the road and across the road, and in which sometimes Mr. Wriford hit Mr. Puddlebox, and sometimes Mr. Puddlebox hit Mr. Wriford, and sometimes both hit the wagoner and sometimes by him were hit—a whirlwind, three-sided battle, in which, in short, by common intent of the three, the thing to do was simply to hit and to roar. Six arms whirling enormous thumps; six legs lashing tremendous kicks; the air and three bodies receiving them; one mouth bawling curses of the very pit of obscenity; another howling: "Glumph him, boy! Glumph him!" Mr. Wriford's mouth laughing with fierce, exultant, hysterical glee.

The sudden rush that had rid Mr. Wriford of Figure of Wriford had returned him, and returned him with recklessness a hundredfold, to the mood, reckless of what happened to him, that had first embarked him on the wagon. And more than that. Out of the clutch of cowardice and lusting into the lust of action! When swinging his legs over the tail-board of the wagon, he had but gleefully thought of how now he was free, of caring nothing what happened to him, of gleefully throwing himself into any mad adventure. He had but thought of it; now he was in it! in it! in it! and in it! became the slogan of his fighting as he fought. "In it!" and a blind whirling wallop at the flaming wagoner's flaming face. "In it!" and colliding heavily with one of Mr. Puddlebox's glumphing rushes, and laughing aloud. "In it!" and spun staggering with a thump of one of the wagoner's whirling sledge-hammers, and staggering but to come with a fierce glee "In it! In it!" once again. Out of the clutch of cowardice that had him a moment before—cowardice bested for the first time in all these years of its nightmare sovereignty: and at that thought "In it! in it! in it!" with fierce and fiercer lust and fierce and fiercer and fiercest exultation. "In it!" Ah!

This extraordinary battle—extraordinary for a shrinking, gentlemanly, refined, well-dressed, comfortably housed, afternoon-tea-drinking Londoner—raged, if it had any order at all, about the towering person of the liver-cutting wagoner, and now went bawling to its end.

For this gentleman would no sooner get the liver of one antagonist in his fiery clutches than the other would come at him like a runaway horse and require attention that resulted in the escape of the first. And now a liver, heavily embedded in the bulky waist of Mr. Puddlebox, came at him head down with a force and with a fortune of aim that not even a stouter man than the wagoner could have withstood.

A very terrible buffet had just been inflicted upon Mr. Puddlebox. A sledge-hammer wallop from the wagoner had caught him in the throat ("Ooop!") and remained there, squeezing ("Arrp!"). The other hand had then clawed him like a tiger's bite in close proximity to his coveted liver ("Arrp! Ooop!"); and the two hands had finally hurled him ten feet away to end in a most shattering fall ("UMP!"). This manoeuvre was carried out by the flaming wagoner from the side of the ditch to which repeated rushes had driven him, and now he turned and directed a stupendous kick at Mr. Wriford, who came fiercely on his left. Mr. Wriford twisted; the immense boot but scraped him.

Then Mr. Puddlebox—the flaming wagoner on one leg, vitally exposed.

Mr. Puddlebox, head down, eyes shut, arms stretched behind him, hymned on to victory by the music of the broken bottles in his coat-tails, bounding across the road at the highest speed of which he was capable and into the liver-cutting gentleman's own liver and wind with stunning and irresistible force and rich clash of jangling glass.

Prone into the ditch the liver-cutting gentleman and there lay—advertising his presence only by those distressing groans which are at once the symptom of a winding and the only sound of which a winded is capable.

Mr. Puddlebox, also in the ditch, separated himself from the stricken mass and, stepping upon it, emerged upon the victorious battle-field rubbing his head.

A very loud, panting "Hurrah!" from Mr. Wriford; but before further felicitations could be exchanged, attention was demanded by a fourth party to the scene, who had been approaching unobserved for some time, and who now arrived and announced himself with: "Now then—hur!"

CHAPTER III
DISTURBED EQUIPOISE OF A COUNTERBALANCING MACHINE

This was a sergeant of police, short, red, hot, neckless, filled with a seeming excess of bile, or of self-importance, which he must needs correct or affirm—according as it was the one or the other—with a hur! at the end of each sentence, and balanced by prodigious development in the rear against the remarkable fullness beneath his tunic in the front, which he carried rather as though it were a drum or some other detachable article that must be conducted with care.

Mr. Wriford was a little tickled at this gentleman's appearance and, of the reckless mood that had him—panting, flaming, bruised, exulting—was not at all inclined to be hectored in the way that the hur! seemed to suggest was the sergeant's custom. Trained, however, to the Londoner's proper respect for a policeman, he answered, still panting: "There's been a bit of a fight."

"Saw that—hur!" said the sergeant. "Three of you when I come along. Where's the other—hur!"

"In the ditch," said Mr. Wriford. "Can't you hear him?"

The sergeant carried his drum carefully to the sound of the winded groans and, lowering it so far as he was able, peered over its circumference at the prostrate wagoner. In this position his posterior development, called upon to exercise its counterbalancing effect in the highest degree, displayed itself to immense advantage, and Mr. Wriford eyed it with a twitching of his face that spoke of a sudden freakish thought.

The sergeant readjusted his drum and turned upon him: "Who's done this? Hur!"

"Been a fight, I tell you," said Mr. Wriford, and laughed at the idea that had been in his mind and at the look it would have caused on the sergeant's face if he had executed it.

The sergeant drew in a breath that raised the drum in a motion that spelt rufflement. "Don't want you to tell me nothing but what you're asked," he said. "Man lying here hurt. Case of assault—hur!" He moved the drum slowly in the direction of Mr. Puddlebox and this time "hured" before he spoke. "Hur! Thought I knew you as I come along. Seen you afore—in the dock,—ain't I?"

"I've been in so many," said Mr. Puddlebox amicably, wiping his face from which the sweat streamed, "that if I've omitted yours, you must put it down to oversight, not unfriendliness."

"None o' that!" returned the sergeant. "No sauce. I know yer. Charged with assault, both of yer, an' anything said used evidence against yer. Hur! Who's this man down here?"

"Look and see if you know him," Mr. Wriford suggested. "I don't."

The drum was again advanced to the ditch, and the counterbalancing operation again very carefully put into process. Mr. Wriford's eyes danced with the wild idea that possessed him. To cap this tremendous hullabaloo in which he had been in it! in it! in it! To fly the wildest flight of all! To overturn, with a walloping kick, a policeman!

He drew near to Mr. Puddlebox and pulled his sleeve to attract his attention.

"Why, that's George!" said the sergeant, midway in operation of his counterbalancing machine. "That's old George Huggs—hur!"

"Can't be!" said Mr. Wriford and pulled Mr. Puddlebox's sleeve, and pointed first at the tremendous uniformed stern gingerly lowering the tunic-ed drum, then at his own foot, then down the road.

"Can't be!" returned the sergeant. "What yer mean, can't be! That's Miller Derrybill's George Huggs. George! George, you've got to come out and prosecute. George, I say—hur!"

Mr. Puddlebox, realizing the meaning of Mr. Wriford's pantomime, puffed out his cheeks with laughter bursting to be free and nodded. Mr. Wriford took one quick step and poised his foot at the tremendous target.

"George!" said the sergeant. "George Huggs! Hur!"

"Whoop!" said Mr. Wriford, and lashed.

The counterbalancing machine, not specified for this manner of usage, overturned with the slow and awful movement of a somersaulting elephant. One agonized scream from its owner, one dreadful bellow from George Huggs as the enormous sergeant plunged head foremost upon him—Mr. Wriford and Mr. Puddlebox, shouts of laughter handicapping their progress but impossible of control, at full speed down the road.

CHAPTER IV
FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

I

Close of this day found the two in the outlying barn of a farm to which, as night fell, Mr. Puddlebox had led the way. There had intervened between it and the glorious battle-field an imperial midday banquet at an inn provided by Mr. Wriford, who found sixteen shillings in his pocket and had expended upon the meal four, upon sundries for further repasts one, and upon a bottle of whisky to replace the music in Mr. Puddlebox's coat-tail three and six. Thence a long amble to put much countryside between themselves and the mighty gentlemen left in the ditch, and so luxuriously to bed upon delicious hay, three parts of the whisky in the bottle, the other quarter comfortably packed into Mr. Puddlebox.

Through the banquet and through the day there had been bursts of laughter, started by one and immediately chorused by the other, at recollections of the stupendous struggle and the stupendous kick; also, prompted by Mr. Wriford, reiterated conversation upon a particular aspect of the affair.

"I did my share?" Mr. Wriford would eagerly inquire.

"Loony, you did two men's share," Mr. Puddlebox would reply. "And your kick of the policeman was another two men's—four men's share, boy. I didn't want you in it, loony. You're not fit for such, I thought. But you glumphed 'em, boy! You glumphed 'em like six men! Loony, you're unspooking—you're unspooking double quick!"

Mr. Wriford thrilled at that and laughed aloud and swung his arms in glee, and through the advancing night, lying warmly in the hay by Mr. Puddlebox's side, continued to feast upon it and to chuckle over it; and while he feasted and chuckled very often said to himself: "And that's the way to get rid of myself following me. When I was frightened by the wagon, he came. When I was walloping and smashing, he went and hasn't come back. Very well. Now I know."

II

Mr. Wriford enjoyed some hours of dreamless sleep. He awoke, and on the hay and in the darkness lay awake and thought.

"Well, this is a very funny state of affairs," Mr. Wriford thought. "Except that I'm in a barn and shall get locked up for a tramp if I'm caught, or at least into a devil of a row with the farmer if he catches me, I'm dashed if I know where I am. I've stolen a ride on a wagon, and I've had a most extraordinary fight in the road with the chap who was driving it. My eyes were shut half the time. I wonder I wasn't killed. I must have got some fearful smashes. I suppose I didn't feel them—you don't when your blood's up. I belted him a few stiff 'uns, though; by gad, I did! I don't know how I had the pluck. I wonder what's the matter with me—I mean to say, me! fighting a chap like that. And then I kicked a policeman. Good Lord, you know—that's about the most appalling thing a man can do! Kicked him bang over—heels over head! By gad, he did go a buster, though!" And at recollection of the buster that the police sergeant went, Mr. Wriford began to laugh and laughed quietly for a good while.

Then he began to think again. "I chucked myself into the river," Mr. Wriford thought. "I'd forgotten that. I've not thought about it since I did it. Good Lord, that was a thing to do! I didn't mean to. One moment I was walking along the Embankment, and the next I was falling in. I wonder what I did in between—how I got up, how I got in. I wanted to die. Yes, I tried to drown and die. I suppose I'm not dead? No, I can't possibly be dead. Everything's funny enough to be another world, but I take my oath I'm not dead. This chap Puddlebox—which can't possibly be his real name—thinks I'm mad. But I'm absolutely not mad. I may be dead—I know I'm not, though; at least I'm pretty sure I'm not—but I'm dashed if I'm mad. I've been too near madness—God knows—not to know it when I see it. Those sort of rushes-up in my head—I might have gone mad any time with one of those. Well, they're gone. I'll never have another; I feel absolutely sure of that. My head feels empty—feels as though it was a different part of me, like I've known my foot feel when it's gone to sleep and I can touch it without feeling it. Before, my head used to feel full, cram full. That's the only difference and that's not mad: it's just the reverse, if anything. What about seeing myself? Who am I then? I mean to say, am I the one I can see or the one I think I am? Well, the thing is, is there any one there when I see him or is it only imagination, only a delusion? If it's a delusion, then it's madness and I'm mad. Well, the very fact that I know that, proves it isn't a delusion and proves I'm absolutely sane; the very fact that I can lie here and argue about it and that I can't see it now because it isn't here, and can see it sometimes because it is there—that very fact proves I'm not mad. I think I know what it is. It's the same sort of thing as I remember once or twice years ago, when I first came to London and had a night out with some men and got a bit tipsy. I remember then sort of seeing myself—sort of trying to pull myself together and realise who I really was; and while I was trying, I could see myself playing the fool and staggering about and making an ass of myself. It was the drink that did that—that kind of separated me into two. Now I've done the same thing by trying to drown myself and nearly succeeding and by coming into this extraordinary state of affairs after living in a groove so long. Part of me is still in that old life and gets the upper hand of me sometimes, just as the drink used to. I've only got to realise that I've done with all that, and I've only got to smash about and not care what happens to me, and I'm all right.

"And I have done with it," cried Mr. Wriford aloud and fiercely, and sitting up and continuing to speak very quickly. "I have done with it! All these years I've been shut up and never enjoyed myself like other men. I've given up my life to others and got mixed up in their troubles and never been able to live for myself. Now I'm going to begin life all over again. I'm not going to care for anybody. I'm just going to let myself—go! I'm not going to care what happens. I'm not going to think of other people's feelings. I'm not going to be polite or care a damn what anybody thinks. If I get hurt, I'm just going to be hurt and not care. If I want to do what would have seemed wrong in the old days, I'm just going to do it and not care. I've cared too much! that's what's been wrong with me. Now I'm not going to care for anything or anybody. This chap Puddlebox said that what was wrong with me was that I thought too much about myself. I remember Brida telling me the same thing once. That's just exactly what it's not. All my life I've thought too much about other people. That's been the trouble. Done! Whoop, my boy, it's done! There's not going to be anybody in the world for myself except me—yes, and not even me. I'm going to be outside it all and just look on—and this me lying here can do what it likes, anything it likes. Hurt itself, starve itself, chuck itself down—that's one of the things I want to do: to get up somewhere and chuck myself down smash! and see what happens and laugh at it, whatever it is. I'm simply not going to care. I belong to myself—or rather myself belongs to me, and I'm going to do what I like with it—just exactly what I like. Puddlebox!"

Mr. Wriford turned to the recumbent form beside him to nudge it into wakefulness, but found it already awake. The gleam of Mr. Puddlebox's open eyes was to be seen in the darkness, and Mr. Puddlebox said: "Loony, how many of you are here this morning?"

"There's only me," said Mr. Wriford. "I'm not going to care—"

"You're spooked again, loony," Mr. Puddlebox interrupted him. "I've been listening to you talking."

"Well, you can listen to this," said Mr. Wriford. "I'm not going to care a damn what happens to me or care a hang for anybody—you or anybody."

"Very well," said Mr. Puddlebox. "That's settled."

"So it is," said Mr. Wriford, "and I tell you what I'm going to do first."

Sufficient of morning was by now stealing through cracks and crevices of the barn to radiate its gloom. Two great doors admitted to the interior. Between them ran a gangway of bricked floor with hay stacked upwards to the roof on either hand. Mr. Wriford could almost touch the roof where now he stood up, his feet sinking in the hay, and could see the top of the ladder by which overnight they had climbed to their bed. "What I'm going to do first," said Mr. Wriford, pointing to the gangway beneath them, "is to jump down there and see what happens."

"Well, I'll tell you what you are going to do last," returned Mr. Puddlebox, "and that also is jump down there, because you'll break your neck and that'll be the end of you, boy."

"I'm going to see," said Mr. Wriford. "Smash! That's just what I want to see."

"Half a minute," said Mr. Puddlebox and caught Mr. Wriford's coat. "Just a moment, my loony, for there's some one else wants to see also. There's some one coming in."

CHAPTER V
INTENTIONS, IN HIS NIGHTSHIRT, OF A FARMER

It was symptomatic of Mr. Wriford's state in these days that any interruption at once diverted him from his immediate purpose and turned him eagerly to whatever new excitement offered. So now, and here was an excitement that promised richly. Perched up there in the darkness and with the guilty knowledge of being a trespasser, it was a very tingling thing to hear the sounds to which Mr. Puddlebox had called attention and, peering towards the door from which they came, to speculate into what alarms they should develop. This was speedily discovered. The sounds proceeded from the door opposite to that by which entry had been made overnight, and from fumbling passed into a jingling of keys, a turning of the lock, and so gave admittance to a gleam of yellow light that immediately was followed by a man bearing a lantern swinging from his left hand and in his right a bunch of keys.

This was a curious gentleman who now performed curious actions. First he peered about him, holding the lantern aloft, and this disclosed him to be short and very ugly, having beneath a black growth on his upper lip yellow teeth that protruded and came down upon his lower. This gentleman was hatless and in a shirt without collar lumped so bulgingly into the top of his trousers as to present the idea that it was very long. Indeed, as he turned about, the lantern at arm's length above his head, it became clear to those who watched that this was his nightshirt that he wore. Next he set down the lantern, locked the door by which he had entered, placed across it an iron bar which fell into a bracket on either side, took up his light again, and proceeded along the gangway.

All this he did very stealthily—turning the key so that the lock could scarcely be heard as it responded, fitting his iron bar, first with great attention on the one side and then on the other, and then walking forward on his toes with manifest straining after secrecy. A rat scurried in the straw behind him, and he twisted round towards it as though terribly startled, with a quick hiss of his breath and with his hand that held the keys clapped swiftly to his heart.

Now he came beneath the stack upon which our two trespassers watched and wondered, and there remained for a space lost from view. There was to be heard a clinking as though he operated with his lantern, and with it a shuffling as though he disturbed the straw. Next he suddenly went very swiftly to the further door, passed through it in haste, and could be heard locking it from the outside, then wrenching at the key as though in a great hurry to be gone, then gone.

"That's funny," said Mr. Wriford. "Was he looking for something?"

"He was precious secret about it," said Mr. Puddlebox.

"Damn it," cried Mr. Wriford, "he's left his lamp behind. You can see the gleam."

Mr. Puddlebox, like curious hound that investigates the breeze, sat with chin up and with twitching nose; then sprang to his feet. "Curse it," cried Mr. Puddlebox, "he's set the place afire! Skip, loony, skip, or we're trapped!" and Mr. Puddlebox hurled himself towards the ladder, reversed himself upon it, missed a rung in his haste, and with a very loud cry disappeared with great swiftness, and with a very loud bump crashed with great force to the ground.

Mr. Wriford followed. Mr. Wriford, with no very clear comprehension of what was toward, but very eager, also slipped, also slithered, and also crashed.

"Hell!" cried Mr. Puddlebox. "Blink! Get off me, loony!"

Mr. Wriford was raised and rolled as by convulsion of a mountain beneath him. As he rolled, he had a glimpse of the lantern embedded in a nest of straw, its smoky flame naked of chimney, and from the flame towards the straw a strip of cloth with a little red smoulder midway upon it. As he sat up, the smoulder flared to a little puff of flame, ran swiftly down the cloth, flared again in the straw, then was eclipsed beneath the mighty Puddlebox, bounded forward from hands and knees upon it.

"The lamp, boy!" bellowed Mr. Puddlebox.

Mr. Wriford dashed at the lamp, bestowed upon it all the breath he could summon, and flattened himself beside Mr. Puddlebox upon a spread of flame that, as he blew, ran from lantern to straw.

"Good boy!" said Mr. Puddlebox. "That was quick," and himself at once did something quicker. Very cautiously first he raised his body upon his hands and knees, squinted beneath it, then dropped it again with immense swiftness and wriggled it violently into the straw. "I'm still burning down here," cried Mr. Puddlebox, and turned a face of much woe and concern towards Mr. Wriford, and inquired: "How's yours, loony?"

Mr. Wriford went through the first, or cautious, portion of Mr. Puddlebox's performance and announced: "Mine's out. Get up and let's have a look."

"Why," said Mr. Puddlebox irritably, "how to the devil can I get up? If I get up it will burst out, and if I lie here I shall be slowly roasted alive. This is the most devil of a predicament that ever a man was in, and I will challenge any man to be in a worse. Unch—my stomach is already like a pot on the fire. Ooch! Blink."

"Well, the fire's simply gaining while you lie there," cried Mr. Wriford. "I can smell it. It's simply gaining, you ass."

"Ass!" cried Mr. Puddlebox. "Ass! I tell you it is you will look an ass and a roast ass if I move. I can get no weight on it to crush it like this. Unch! What I am going to do is to turn over and press it down, moreover I can bear roasting better on that other side of me. Now be ready to give me a hand if the flames burst, and be ready to run, loony—up the ladder and try the roof."

Mr. Puddlebox then raised his chest upon his arms, made a face of great agony as the released pressure caused his stomach to feel the heat more fiercely, then with a stupendous convulsion hurled himself about and gave first a very loud cry as the new quarter of his person took the fire and then many wriggles and a succession of groans as with great courage he pressed his seat down upon the smouldering embers. Lower he wriggled, still groaning. "Ah," groaned Mr. Puddlebox. "Arp. Ooop. Erp. Blink. Eep. Erps. Ooop. Hell!" He then felt about him with his hands, and with the fingers of one finding what he sought and finding it uncommonly hot, brought his fingers to his mouth with a bitter yelp; fumbled again most cautiously, wriggled yet more determinedly, groaned anew, yet at longer intervals, and presently, a beaming smile overspreading his countenance, raised an arm aloft and announced triumphantly: "Out!"

"Out!" repeated Mr. Puddlebox, rising and beating smoulder from his waistcoat with one hand and from his trousers with the other.

"You were devilish plucky," said Mr. Wriford. "I can't help laughing now it's over, you know. But it was a narrow squeak. You were quick getting down, and you saved both our lives by hanging on like that."

"Why, you were quick, too, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox. "You were quick after me as a flash—and plucky. I'd not have done it alone. You're coming on, boy; you're coming on. You're unspooking every minute."

"I did nothing," said Mr. Wriford. But he was secretly glad at the praise, and this, joined to his earlier determination to care nothing for anybody nor for what happened to him, spurred him to give eager aid to what Mr. Puddlebox now proposed.

"I am parboiled in front," said Mr. Puddlebox, finishing his beating of himself, "and I am underdone behind; but the fire is out, and now it is for us to get out. Loony, that was a damned, cold-blooded villain that came here to burn us, and a damned ugly villain as ever I saw, and I will challenge any man to show me an uglier. There is a lesson to be taught him, my loony, and there is compensation to be paid by him; and this he shall be taught and shall pay before I am an hour older in sin."

With this Mr. Puddlebox marched very determinedly up the ladder which he had descended very abruptly, and preceded Mr. Wriford across the top of the hay to the point where this was nearest met by the sloping roof. "It's all very fine," doubted Mr. Wriford, addressing the determined back as they made their way, "it's all very fine, Puddlebox, but mind you we look like getting ourselves in a devil of a fix if we go messing round this chap, whoever he is. He's probably the farmer. If he is it looks as if he wanted to fire his barn to get the insurance; and it'll be an easy thing for him, and a jolly good thing, to shove the blame on us. That's what I think."

"Loony," returned Mr. Puddlebox, arrived under the roof and facing him, "you think too much, and that's just what's the matter with you, as I've told you before. To begin with, his barn has not been burnt, and that's just where we've got him. We are heroes, my loony, and I am a burnt hero, and some one's got to pay for it."

Mr. Wriford's reply to this was first a look of sharp despair upon his face and then to raise his fists and drum them fiercely upon his head.

"Why, boy! boy!" cried Mr. Puddlebox and caught Mr. Wriford's hands and held them. "Why, what to the devil is that for?"

"That's for what I was doing!" cried Mr. Wriford. "That's because I stopped to think. I'm never going to think any more, and I'm never going to stop any more. And if I catch myself stopping or thinking I shall kill myself if need be!"

"Well, why to the devil," said Mr. Puddlebox very quickly, "do you stop to beat yourself instead of doing what I tell you? Where there's a little hole, my loony, there's easy work to make a big one. Here's plenty of little holes in these old tiles of this roof. Up on my shoulders, loony, and get to work on them."

CHAPTER VI
RISE AND FALL OF INTEREST IN A FARMER

Symptomatic again of Mr. Wriford's condition that his storm was gone as quickly as it came. Now filled him only the adventure of breaking out; and he was no sooner, with much laughter, straddled upon Mr. Puddlebox's shoulders and pulling at the tiles, than with smallest effort the little holes in the weather-worn roofing became the large one that Mr. Puddlebox had promised.

"Whoa!" cried Mr. Puddlebox, plunging in the yielding hay beneath Mr. Wriford's weight.

"Whoa!" echoed Mr. Wriford, and to check the staggering grabbed at the crumbling tiles.

"Blink!" cried Mr. Puddlebox and collapsed. "Curse me, is the roof come in on us?"

Mr. Wriford extricated himself and stood away, rubbing his head that had received tiles like discharge of thunderbolts. "A pretty good chunk of it has," said Mr. Wriford. "There's your hole right enough."

This was indeed a great rent capable of accommodating their purpose and more; and Mr. Puddlebox, whose head also needed rubbing, now arose and examined it with his customary cheerfulness. "That's a fine hole, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox, "and a clever one also, for here to this side of it runs a beam which, if it will support us, will have us out, and if it will not, will fetch the whole roof down and have us out that way. Jump for the beam, boy, while I lift you."

Mr. Puddlebox's hands on either side of Mr. Wriford's hips, jumping him, and then at his legs, shoving him, enabled Mr. Wriford with small exertion soon to be straddled along the roof, and then with very enormous exertion to engage in the prodigious task of dragging Mr. Puddlebox after him. When this was accomplished so far as that Mr. Puddlebox's arms, head and chest were upon the beam and the remainder of his body suspended from it, "It's devilish steep up here," grunted Mr. Wriford, flat on his face, hauling amain on the slack of Mr. Puddlebox's trousers, and not at all at his strongest by reason of much laughter at Mr. Puddlebox's groans and strainings; "it's devilish steep and nothing to hold on to. Look out how you come or you'll have us both over and break our necks."

"Well, when to the devil shall I come?" groaned Mr. Puddlebox. "This is the very devil of a pain to have my stomach in; and I challenge any man to have his stomach in a worse. I must drop down again or I am like to be cut in halves."

"I'll never get you up again if you do," Mr. Wriford told him. "I've got your trousers tight to heave you if you'll swing. Swing your legs sideways, and when I say 'Three' swing them up on the beam as high as you can."

The counting of One and Two set Mr. Puddlebox's legs, aided by Mr. Wriford's hands on his stern, swinging like a vast pendulum. "Hard as you can as you come back," called Mr. Wriford, "and hang on like death when you're up—THREE!"

With a most tremendous swing the boots of the pendulum reached the roof and clawed a foothold. Between heels and one shoulder its powerful stern depended ponderously above the hay. "Heave yourself!" shouted Mr. Wriford, hauling on the trousers. "Roll yourself! Heave yourself!" Mr. Puddlebox heaved enormously, rolled tremendously, and, like the counterbalancing machine of the police sergeant, up came his stern, and prodigiously over.

"Look out!" cried Mr. Wriford. "Look out! Let go, you ass!"

"Blink!" cried Mr. Puddlebox, flat and rolling on the steep pitch of the roof. "Blink! We're killed!" clutched anew at Mr. Wriford, tore him from his moorings, and, knotted with him in panic-stricken embrace, whirled away to take the plunge and then the drop.

The strawyard in which the barn stood was fortunately well bedded in straw about the walls of the building. When, with tremendous thump, with the familiar sound of smashing glass and familiar scent of whisky upon the morning air, the two had come to rest and had discovered themselves unbroken—"Why the dickens didn't you let go of me?" Mr. Wriford demanded. "I could have hung on with one hand and held you."

Mr. Puddlebox sat up with his jolly smile and glancing at the height of their descent gave with much fervour:

"O ye falls of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever!"

Mr. Wriford jumped up and waved his arms and laughed aloud and then cried: "That was all right. Now I'm not caring! Now I'm living!"

"Why, look you, my loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, beaming upon him with immense delight, "look you, that was very much all right; and that is why I return praise for it. We might have been killed in falling from there, but most certainly we are not killed; and if we had not fallen we should still be up there, and how I should have found heart to make such a devil of a leap I am not at all aware. Here we are down and nothing the worse save for this disaster that, curse me, my whisky is gone again. Thus there is cause for praise in everything, as I have told you, and in this fall such mighty good cause as I shall challenge you or any man to look at that roof and deny. Now," continued Mr. Puddlebox, getting to his feet, "do you beat your head again, boy, or do we proceed to the farmhouse?"

Mr. Wriford said seriously, "No, I'm damned if I beat my head now, because that time I didn't stop and didn't think except just for a second when we were falling, and then I couldn't stop even if I'd wanted to. No, I'm damned if I beat my head this time."

"What it is," said Mr. Puddlebox, emptying his tail-pocket of the broken whisky bottle, and proceeding with Mr. Wriford towards the farmhouse, "what it is, is that you are damned if you do beat your head—that is, you are spooked, loony, which is the same thing."

Mr. Wriford paid no apparent attention to this, but his glee at believing that, as he had said, he now was not caring and now was living, gave an excited fierceness to his share in their immediate behaviour, which now became very extraordinary.

CHAPTER VII
PROFOUND ATTACHMENT TO HIS FARM OF A FARMER

I

The front door of the farmhouse, embowered in a porch, was found to be on the side further from the strawyard. A fine knocker, very massive, hung upon the door, and this Mr. Puddlebox now seized and operated very loudly, with effect of noise which, echoing through the silent house and through the still air of early morning, would in former circumstances have utterly horrified Mr. Wriford and have put him to panic-stricken flight in very natural apprehension of what it would bring forth. Now, however, it had no other effect upon him than first to make him give a nervous gasp and nervous laugh of nervous glee, and next himself to seize the knocker and put into it all the determination of those old days forever ended and these new days of freedom in which he cared for nothing and for nobody now begun.

Fiercely Mr. Wriford knocked until his arm was tired and then flung down the knocker with a last crash and turned on Mr. Puddlebox a flushed face and eyes that gleamed. "I don't care a damn what happens!" he cried.

"My word," said Mr. Puddlebox, gazing at him, "something is like to happen now after all that din. You've got hold of yourself this time, boy."

Mr. Wriford laughed recklessly. "I'll show you," he cried, "I'll show you this time!" and took up the knocker again.

But something was shown without his further effort. His hand was scarcely put to the knocker, when a casement window grated above the porch in which they stood, and a very harsh voice cried: "What's up? Who's that? What's the matter there?" and then with a change of tone: "What's that light in the sky? Is there a fire?"

Mr. Wriford, his new fierceness of not caring, of letting himself go, fierce upon him, was for rushing out of the porch to look up at the window and face this inquiry, but Mr. Puddlebox a moment restrained him. "That's our old villain for sure," Mr. Puddlebox whispered. "There's no ghost of light in the sky that fire would make; but he's prepared for one, and that proves him the old villain that he is."

"Now, then!" rasped the voice. "Who are you down there? What's up? What's that light in the sky?"

Out from the porch charged Mr. Wriford, Mr. Puddlebox with a hand on his arm bidding him: "Go warily, boy; leave this to me."

So they faced the window, and there, sure enough, framed within it, was displayed the gentleman that had been seen with the lantern, with the black scrub upon his upper lip, and with the yellow teeth protruded beneath it.

"That light is the moon," Mr. Puddlebox informed him pleasantly. "Luna, the dear old moon. Queen-Empress of the skies."

"The moon!" shouted the yellow-toothed gentleman. "The moon! Who the devil are you, and what's your business?"

Mr. Puddlebox responded stoutly to this rough address. "Why, what to the devil else should it be but the moon? Is it something else you're looking for—?"

The yellow-toothed gentleman interrupted him by leaning out to his waist from the window and bellowing: "Something else! Come, what the devil's up and what's your business, or I'll rouse the house and set about the pair of 'ee."

Then Mr. Wriford, no longer to be restrained. Mr. Wriford, fierce to indulge his resolution not to care for anybody and shaking with the excitement of it. Mr. Wriford, to Mr. Puddlebox's much astonishment, in huge and ferocious bawl: "What's up!" bawled Mr. Wriford, hopping about in reckless ecstasy of fierceness. "What's up! Why, you know jolly well what's up, you beastly old villain. Tried to set your barn afire, you ugly-faced old scoundrel! I saw you! I was in there! I saw you with your lamp! Come down, you rotten-toothed old fiend! Come down and have your face smashed, you miserable old sinner!"

The gentleman thus opprobriously addressed disappeared with great swiftness, and immediately could be heard thumping down-stairs with sounds that betokened bare feet.

"That's done it," said Mr. Wriford, wiping his face which was very hot, and placed himself before the porch to await the expected arrival.

"My goodness, it has," said Mr. Puddlebox. "You've let yourself go this time, boy. And what the devil is going to happen next—

"I'll show you," cried Mr. Wriford and, as the key turned in the lock and the door opened, proceeded to the demonstration thus promised with a fierceness of action even more astonishing than his earlier outburst of words.

The door was no sooner opened to reveal the yellow-toothed gentleman in his nightshirt and bare feet, than Mr. Wriford rushed upon him, seized him by his flowing garment, and dragged him forth into the yard. Mr. Wriford then revolved very swiftly, causing the yellow-toothed gentleman, who had the wider ambit to perform, to revolve more swiftly yet, and this on naked feet that made him complain very loudly and bound very highly when they lighted upon a stone, spun him in these dizzy circles down the yard, and after a final maze at final speed released him with the result that the yellow-toothed gentleman first performed a giddy whirl entirely on his own account, then the half of another on his heels and in mortal danger of overbalancing, and then, with the best intentions in the world to complete this circuit, was checked by waltzing into his duck-pond, wherein with a very loud shriek he disappeared.

Mr. Wriford again wiped his face, which was now much hotter than before, and with a cry of "Come on!" to Mr. Puddlebox, who was staring in amazement towards the pond and its struggling occupant, made a run to the house. Mr. Puddlebox joined him within the door, and Mr. Wriford then locked the door behind them, and looking very elatedly at Mr. Puddlebox, inquired of him triumphantly: "Well, what about that?"

"Loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, "I never saw the like of it. It's a licker."

"So it is!" cried Mr. Wriford. "I fairly buzzed him, didn't I? You needn't whisper. There's no one here but ourselves, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that chap's managed to get the place to himself so that he could make no mistake about getting his barn burnt down. Anyway, I'm going to see, and I don't care a dash if there is." And by way of seeing, Mr. Wriford put up his head and shouted: "Hulloa! Hulloa, is there anybody in here?"

"Hulloa!" echoed Mr. Puddlebox, subscribing with great glee to Mr. Wriford's excitement.

"Hulloa!" cried Mr. Wriford in a very loud voice. "If anybody wants a hit in the eye come along down and ask for it!"

To this engaging invitation there was from within the house no answer; but from without, against the door, a very loud thud which was the yellow-toothed gentleman hurling himself against it, and then his fists beating against it and his voice crying: "Let me in! Let me in, won't you!"

"No, I won't!" called Mr. Wriford, and answered the banging with lusty and defiant kicks. "Get back to your pond or I'll come and throw you there."

"I'm cold," cried the yellow-toothed gentleman, changing his voice to one of entreaty. "Look here, I want to talk to you."

"Go and light your barn again and warm yourself," shouted Mr. Puddlebox; but the laughter with which he shouted it was suddenly checked, for the yellow-toothed gentleman was heard to call: "Hullo! Hi! Jo! Quick, Jo! Come along quick!"

"Boy," said Mr. Puddlebox, "we ought to have got away from this while he was in the pond. What to the devil's going to happen now?"

"Listen," said Mr. Wriford; but they had scarcely listened a minute before there happened a sound of breaking glass in an adjoining room. "They're getting in through a window," cried Mr. Wriford. "We must keep them out."

Several doors led from the spacious old hall in which they stood, and Mr. Puddlebox, choosing one, chose the wrong one, for here was an apartment whose window stood intact and beyond which the sounds of entry could still be heard. A further door in this room that might have led to them was found to be locked and without key. Mr. Puddlebox and Mr. Wriford charged back to the hall, down the hall alongside this room, through a door which led to a passage behind it, and thence through another door which revealed one gentleman in his nightshirt, yellow and black with mire from head to foot, who was reaching down a wide-mouthed gun from the wall, and another gentleman in corduroys, having a bucolic countenance which was very white, who in the act of entry had one leg on the floor and the other through the window.

II

"If they've got in we'll run for it," Mr. Puddlebox had said as they came down the passage. But the room was entered so impetuously that the only running done was, perforce, into it, and at that with a stumbling rush on the part of Mr. Puddlebox into the back of the nightshirt and the collapse of Mr. Wriford over Mr. Puddlebox's heels upon him. Mr. Puddlebox encircled the nightshirt about its waist with his arms; the nightshirt, gun in hand, staggered towards the corduroy and with the gun swept its supporting leg from under it; the gun discharged itself through its bell-shaped mouth with an appalling explosion; the corduroy with a loud shriek to the effect that he was dead fell upon the head of the nightshirt; and there was immediately a tumult of four bodies with sixteen whirling legs and arms, no party to which had any clear perception as to the limbs that belonged to himself, or any other strategy of campaign than to claw and thump at whatever portion of whoever's body offered itself for the process. There were, with all this, cries of very many kinds and much obscenity of meaning, changing thrice to a universal bellow of horror as first a table and its contents discharged itself upon the mass, then a dresser with an artillery of plates and dishes, and finally a grandfather clock which, descending sideways along the wall, swept with it a comprehensive array of mural decorations.

Assortment of arms and legs was at length begun out of all this welter by the corduroyed gentleman who, finding himself not dead as he had believed, but in great danger of reaching that state in some very horrible form, found also his own hands and knees and upon them crawled away very rapidly towards an adjoining room whose door stood invitingly open. There were fastened to his legs as he did so a pair of hands whose owner he first drew after him, then dislodged by, on the threshold of the open door, beating at them with a broken plate, and having done so, sprung upright to make for safety. The owner of the hands however sprung with him, attached them—and it was Mr. Wriford—to his throat, and thrust him backwards into the adjoining room and into the midst of several shallow pans of milk with which the floor of this room was set.

This apartment was, in fact, the dairy; and here, while thunder and crashing proceeded from the other room in which Mr. Puddlebox and the nightshirt weltered, extraordinary contortions to the tune of great splashing and tin-pan crashing were forced upon the corduroyed gentleman by Mr. Wriford's hands at his throat. Broad shelves encircled this room, and first the corduroyed gentleman was bent backwards over the lowest of these until the back of his head adhered to some pounds of butter, then whirled about and bent sideways until in some peril of meeting his end by suffocation in cream, then inclined to the other side until a basket of eggs were no longer at their highest market value, and finally hurled from Mr. Wriford to go full length and with a large white splash into what pans of milk remained in position on the floor.

Mr. Wriford, with a loud "Ha!" of triumph, and feeling, though greatly bruised in the first portion of the fight and much besmeared with dairy-produce in the second, much more of a man than he had ever felt before, then dashed through the door and locked it upon the corduroy's struggles to free himself from death in a milky grave, and then prepared to give fierce assistance to the drier but as deadly fray still waging between Mr. Puddlebox and the nightshirt.

Upon the welter of crockery and other debris here to view, these combatants appeared to be practising for a combined rolling match, or to be engaged in rolling the litter into a smooth and equable surface. Locked very closely together by their arms, and with equal intensity by their legs, they rolled first to one end of the room or to a piece of overturned furniture and then, as if by common consent, back again to the other end or to another obstacle. This they performed with immense swiftness and with no vocal sounds save very distressed breathing as they rolled and very loud and simultaneous Ur! as they checked at the end of a roll and started back for the next.

As Mr. Wriford watched, himself breathing immensely after his own exertions yet laughing excitedly at what he saw, he was given opportunity of taking part by the rollers introducing a new diversion into their exercise. This was provided by the grandfather clock, which, embedded in the debris like a partly submerged coffin, now obstructed their progress. A common spirit of splendid determination not to be stopped by it appeared simultaneously to animate them. With one very loud Ur! they came against it; with a secondhand a third and each time a louder Ur! charged it again and again; with a fourth Ur! magnificently mounted it; and with a fifth, the debris on this side being lower, plunged down from it. The shock in some degree relaxed their embrace one with the other. From their locked forms a pair of naked legs upshot. Mr. Wriford jumped for the ankles, clutched them amain, and with the information "I've got his legs!" and with its effect, encouraged Mr. Puddlebox to a mighty effort, whereby at length he broke free from the other's grasp, sat upright upon the nightshirt's chest, and then, securing its arms, faced about towards Mr. Wriford, and seated himself upon the nightshirt's forehead.

"Where's yours?" said Mr. Puddlebox, when he had collected sufficient breath for the question.

"Locked up in there," said Mr. Wriford, nodding his head towards the dairy.

"Loony," said Mr. Puddlebox, "this has been the most devil of a thing that ever any man has been in, and I challenge you or any man ever to have been in a worse."

"I'll have you in a worse," bawled the nightshirt. "I'll—" and as though incapable of giving sufficient words to his intentions he opened his mouth very widely and emitted from it a long and roaring bellow. Into this cavern of his jaws Mr. Puddlebox, now kneeling on the nightshirt's arms, dropped a cloth cap very conveniently abandoned by the corduroy; and then, facing across the prostrate form, Mr. Puddlebox and Mr. Wriford went into a hysteria of laughter only checked at last by the nightshirt, successfully advantaging himself of the weakening effect of their mirth, making a tremendous struggle to overthrow them.

"But, loony," said Mr. Puddlebox when the farmer was again mastered, "we are best out of this, for such a battle I could by no means fight again."

"Well, I don't care," said Mr. Wriford. "I don't care a dash what happens or who comes. Still, we'd better go. First we must tie this chap up and then clean ourselves. My man's all right in there. There's no window where he is—only a grating round the top. I'll find something to fix this one with if you can hold his legs."

This Mr. Puddlebox, by kneeling upon the nightshirt's arms and stretching over them to his legs, was able to do, and Mr. Wriford, voyaging the dishevelled room, gave presently a gleeful laugh and presented himself before Mr. Puddlebox with a wooden box and with information that made Mr. Puddlebox laugh also and the nightshirt, unable to shout, to express his personal view in new and tremendous struggles.

"Nails," said Mr. Wriford, "and a hammer. We'll nail him down;" and very methodically, working along each side of each extended arm, and down each border of the nightshirt pulled taut across his person, proceeded to attach the yellow-toothed gentleman to the floor more literally and more closely than any occupier, unless similarly fastened, can ever have been attached to his boyhood's home.

"There!" said Mr. Wriford, stepping back and regarding his handiwork, which was indeed very creditably performed, with conscionable satisfaction. "There you are, my boy, as tight as a sardine lid, and if you utter a sound you'll get one through your head as well."

This, however, was a contingency which the nightshirt, thanks to the cap in his mouth, was in no great danger of arousing, and leaving him to enjoy the flavour of his gag and his unique metallic bordering, which from the hue of his countenance and the flame of his eyes he appeared indisposed to do, there now followed on the part of Mr. Wriford and Mr. Puddlebox a very welcome and a highly necessary adjustment of their toilets. It was performed by Mr. Puddlebox with his mouth prodigiously distended with a meal collected from the kitchen, and by Mr. Wriford, as he cooled, with astonished reflection upon the extraordinary escapades which he had now added to his exploits of the previous day. "Well, this is a most extraordinary state of affairs for me," reflected Mr. Wriford, much as he had reflected earlier in the morning. "Most extraordinary, I'm dashed if it isn't! I've pretty well killed a chap and drowned him in milk; and I've slung a chap into a pond and then nailed him down by his nightshirt. Well, I'm doing things at last; and I don't care a dash what happens; and I don't care a dash what comes next."

III

Now this cogitation took place in an upper room whither Mr. Wriford had repaired in quest of soap and brushes, and what came next came at once and came very quickly, being first reported by Mr. Puddlebox, who at this point rushed up-stairs to announce as rapidly as his distended mouth would permit: "Loony, there's a cart come up to the door with four men in it—hulkers!" and next illustrated by a loud knocking responsive to which there immediately arose from the imprisoned corduroy a great shouting and from the gagged and nailed-down nightshirt a muffled blaring as of a cow restrained from its calf.

Very much quicker than might be supposed, and while Mr. Puddlebox and Mr. Wriford stared one upon the other in irresolute concern, these sounds blended into an enormous hullabaloo below stairs which spoke of the entry by the window of the new arrivals, of the release from his gag of the nailed-down nightshirt and from his milky gaol of the imprisoned corduroy, and finally of wild and threatening search which now came pouring very alarmingly up the stairs.

Mr. Wriford locked the door, Mr. Puddlebox opened the window, and immediately their door was first rattled with cries of "Here they are!" and then assailed by propulsion against it of very violent bodies.

The drop from the window was not one to be taken in cold blood. It was taken, nevertheless, side by side and at hurtling speed by Mr. Wriford and by Mr. Puddlebox through each half of the casement; and this done, and the concussion recovered from, the farm surroundings which divided them from the road were taken also at headlong bounds accelerated when midway across by a loud crash and by ferocious view-hulloas from the window.

The boundary hedge was gained. There was presented to the fugitives a roadside inn having before it, travel-stained, throbbing, and unattended, a very handsome touring motor-car. There was urged upon their resources as they jumped to the road the sight of two men red-hot in their rear and, more alarmingly, three led by the milky corduroy short-cutting towards their flank.

"Blink!" gasped Mr. Puddlebox. "Blink! Hide!" and ran two bewildered paces up the road and three distracted paces down it.

"Hide where?" panted Mr. Wriford, his wits much shaken by his run, by the close sight of the pursuit, and more than ever by Mr. Puddlebox bumping into him as he turned in his first irresolution and colliding with him again as he turned in his second.

"Blink!—Here," cried Mr. Puddlebox, made a dash at the motor-car—Mr. Wriford in bewildered confusion on his heels—opened the door, and closing it behind them, crouched with Mr. Wriford on the floor.

"Run for it the opposite way as soon as they pass us," said Mr. Puddlebox. "This is a very devil of a business, and I will challenge—Here they come!"

But, quicker than they, came also another, and he from the inn. This was a young man in livery of a chauffeur, who emerged very hurriedly wiping his mouth and telling the landlord who followed him: "My gov'nor won't be half wild if I ain't there by two o'clock." With which he jumped very nimbly to his wheel, released his clutch, and with no more than a glance at the milky corduroy and his friends who now came baying down the hedge, was in a moment bearing Mr. Puddlebox and Mr. Wriford at immense speed towards wherever it was that his impatient gov'nor awaited him.

Mr. Wriford put his hands to his head and said, more to himself than to Mr. Puddlebox: "Well, this is the most extraordinary—"

Mr. Puddlebox settled his back against the seat, and cocking a very merry eye at Mr. Wriford, chanted with enormous fervour:

"O ye motors of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him for ever."

CHAPTER VIII
FIRST PERSON EXTRAORDINARY

"Well—" said Mr. Wriford to himself.

There is to be added here, as bringing Mr. Wriford to this exclamation, that at midday the chauffeur, having whirled through rural England at great speed for some hours on end, again drew up at a roadside inn no less isolated than that at which he had first accommodated his passengers, and had no sooner repaired within than Mr. Puddlebox, first protruding a cautious head and finding no soul in sight, then led out the way through the further door and then up the road until a friendly hedgeside invited them to rest and to the various foods which Mr. Puddlebox had brought from the farm and now produced from his pockets.

Mr. Wriford ate in silence, and nothing that Mr. Puddlebox could say could fetch him from his thoughts. "Well," thought Mr. Wriford, "this is the most extraordinary state of affairs! A week ago I was an editor in London and afraid of everything and everybody. Now I've been in the river, and I've stolen a ride in a wagon, and I've had a devil of a fight with a wagoner, and I've kicked a policeman head over heels bang into a ditch, and I've nearly been burnt alive, and I've broken out through the roof of a barn and fallen a frightful buster off it, and I've slung a chap into a pond, and I've nearly killed a chap and half-drowned him in milk, and I've nailed a man to the floor by his nightshirt, and I've jumped out of a high window and been chased for my life, and I've stolen a ride in a motor-car, and where the devil I am now I haven't the remotest idea. Well, it's the most extraordinary—!"

BOOK THREE
ONE OF THE FRIGHTENED ONES

CHAPTER I
BODY WORK

I

It was in early May that Mr. Wriford cast himself into the river. Declining Summer, sullied in her raiment by September's hand, slain by October's, found him still in Mr. Puddlebox's company. But a different Wriford from him whom that jolly gentleman had first met upon the road from Barnet. In body a harder man, what of the open life, the mad adventures, and of the casual work—all manual work—in farm and field that supplied their necessaries when these ran short. And harder man in soul. "You're a confirmed rascal, sir," addressed him the chairman of a Bench of country magistrates before whom—and not their first experience of such—he and Mr. Puddlebox once were haled, their offence that they had been found sleeping in the outbuildings of a rural parsonage.

The rector, a gentleman, appearing unwillingly to prosecute, pleaded for the prisoners. A trivial offence, he urged—a stormy night on which he would gladly have given them shelter had they asked for it, and he turned to the dock with: "Why did you not come and ask for it, my friend?"

"Why, there'd have been no fun in doing that!" said Mr. Wriford.

"Fun!" exclaimed the rector. "No, no fun perhaps. But a hearty welcome I—"

"Oh, keep your hearty welcomes to yourself!" cried Mr. Wriford.

And then the chairman: "You're a confirmed rascal, sir. A confirmed and stubborn rascal. When our good vicar—"

"Well, you're a self-important, over-fed, and very gross-looking pomposity," returned Mr. Wriford.

"Seven days," said the chairman, very swollen. "Take them away, constable."

"Curse me," said Mr. Puddlebox when, accommodated for the night in adjoining cells, they conversed over the partition that divided them. "Curse me, you're no better than a fool, loony, and I challenge any man to be a bigger. Here we are at these vile tasks for a week and would have got away scot free and a shilling from the parson but for your fool's tongue."

"Well, I had to say something to stir them up," explained Mr. Wriford. "I must be doing something all the time, or I get—

"Well, there's better things to do than this cursed foolishness," grumbled Mr. Puddlebox.

"It's new to me," said Mr. Wriford. "That's what I want."

That indeed was what he wanted in these months and ever sought with sudden bursts of fierceness or of irresponsible prankishness. He must be doing something all the time and doing something that brought reprisals, either in form of fatigue that followed hard work in their odd jobs—digging, carting stable refuse, hoeing a long patch of root crops, harvesting which gave the pair steady employment and left them at the turn of the year with a stock of shillings in hand, roadside work where labour had fallen short and a builder was behindhand with a contract for some cottages—or in form of punishment such as followed his truculence before the magistrate or was got by escapades of the nature of their early adventures.

Something that brought reprisals, something to be felt in his body. "Why, you don't understand, you see," Mr. Wriford would cry, responsive to remonstrance from Mr. Puddlebox. "All my life I've felt things here—here in my head," and he would strike his head hard and begin to speak loudly and very fiercely and quickly, so that often his words rolled themselves together or were several times repeated. "In my head, head, head—all mixed up and whirling there so I felt I must scream to let it all out: scream out senseless words and loud roars like uggranddlearrrrohohohgarragarragaddaurrr! Now my head's empty, empty, empty, and I can smash at it as if it didn't belong to me. Look here!"

"Ah, stop it, boy, stop it!" Mr. Puddlebox would cry, and catch at Mr. Wriford's fist that banged in illustration.

"Well, that's just to show you. Man alive, I've stood sometimes in my office with my head in such a whirling crash, and feeling so sick and frightened—that always went with it—that I've felt I must catch by the throat the next man who came in and kill him dead before he could speak to me. In my head, man, in my head—felt things all my life in my head: and in my heart;" and Mr. Wriford would strike himself fiercely upon his breast. "Felt things in my heart so I was always in a torment and always tying myself up tighter and tighter and tighter—not doing this because I thought it was unkind to this person; and doing that because I thought I ought to do it for that person—messing, messing, messing round and spoiling my life with rotten sentiment and rotten ideas of rotten duty. God, when I think of the welter of it all! Now, my boy, it's all over! My head's as empty as an empty bucket and so's my heart. I don't care a curse for anybody or anything. I'm beginning to do what I ought to have done years ago—enjoy myself. It's only my body now; I want to ache it and feel it and hurt it and keep it going all the time. If I don't, if I stop going and going and going, I begin to think; and if I begin to think I begin to go back again. Then up I jump, my boy, and let fly at somebody again, or dig or whatever the work is, as if the devil was in me and until my body is ready to break, and then I say to my body: 'Go on, you devil; go on. I'll keep you at it till you drop. You've been getting soft and rotten while my head was working and driving me. Now it's your turn. But you don't drive me, my boy; I drive you. Get at it!' That's the way of it, Puddlebox. I'm free now, and I'm enjoying myself, and I want to go on doing new things and doing them hard, always and all the time. Now then!"

Mr. Puddlebox: "Sure you're enjoying yourself, boy?"

"Why, of course I am. When it was all this cursed head and all worry I didn't belong to myself. Now it's all body, and I'm my own. I've missed something all my life. Now I'm finding it. I'm finding what it is to be happy—it's not to care. That's the secret of it."

Mr. Puddlebox would shake his head. "That's not the secret of it, boy."

"What is, then?"

"Why, what I've told you: not to think so much about yourself."

"Well, that's just what I'm doing. I'm not caring a curse what happens to me."

"Yes, and thinking about that all the time. That's just where you're spooked, boy."

"Spooked!" Mr. Wriford would cry with an easy laugh. "That's seeing myself like I used to. I've not seen myself for weeks—months."

"But you're not unspooked yet, boy," Mr. Puddlebox would return.

II

They were come west in their tramping—set in that quarter by the motor-car that had run them from that early adventure with the nightshirted and the corduroyed gentlemen. It had alighted them in Wiltshire, and they continued, while splendid summer in imperial days and pageant nights attended them, by easy and haphazard stages down into Dorset and thence through Somerset and Devon into Cornwall by the sea.

Many amazements in these counties and in these months—some of a train with those afforded by the liver-cutting wagoner and by the yellow-toothed farmer bent upon arson; some quieter, but to Mr. Wriford, if he permitted thought, not less amazing—as when he found himself working with his hands and in his sweat for manual wages; some in outrage of law and morals that had shocked the Mr. Wriford of the London days. He must be doing something, as he had told Mr. Puddlebox, and doing something all the time. What he did not tell was that these things—when they were wild, irresponsible, grotesque, wrong, immoral—-were done by conscious effort before they were entered upon. Mr. Wriford used to—had to—dare himself to do them. "Now, here you are!" Mr. Wriford would say to himself when by freakish thought some opportunity offered itself. "Here you are! Ah, you funk it! I knew you would. I thought so. You funk it!" And then, thus taunted, would come the sudden burst of fierceness or of irresponsible prankishness, and Mr. Wriford would rush at the thing fiercely, and fiercely begin it, and with increasing fierceness carry it to settlement—one way or the other.

Once, up from a roadside to a labourer who came sturdily by, "I'll fight you for tuppence!" cried Mr. Wriford, facing him. "Ba goom, I'll faight thee for nowt!" said the man and knocked him down, and when again he rushed, furious and bleeding, smashed him again, and laughing at the ease of it, trod on his way.

"Well, why to the devil did you do such a mad thing?" said Mr. Puddlebox, awakened from a doze and tending Mr. Wriford's hurts. "Where to the devil is the sense of such a thing?"

"I thought of it as he came along," said Mr. Wriford, "and I had to do it."

"Why, curse me," cried Mr. Puddlebox, "I mustn't even sleep for your madness, boy."

"Well, I've done it," Mr. Wriford returned, much hurt but fiercely glad. "I've done it, and I'm happy. If I hadn't—oh, you wouldn't understand. That's enough. Let it bleed. Let the damned thing bleed. I like to see it."

He used to like to sit and count his bruises. He used to like, after hard work on some employment, to sit and reckon which muscles ached him most and then to spring up and exercise them so they ached anew. He used to like to sit and count over and over again the money that their casual labours earned him. These—bruises, and aches and shillings—were the indisputable testimony to his freedom, to the fact that he at last was doing things, to the reprisals against which he set his body and full earned. He used to like to go long periods without food. He used to like, when rain fell and Mr. Puddlebox sought shelter, to stand out in the soak of it and feel its soak. These—fastings and discomforts—were manifests that his body was suffering things, and that he was its master and his own.

Through all these excesses—checking him in many, from many dissuading him, in their results supporting him—Mr. Puddlebox stuck to him. That soft, fat, kindly and protective hand came often between him and self-invited violence from strangers by Mr. Puddlebox—when Mr. Wriford was not looking—tapping his head and accompanying the sign with nods and frowns in further illustration, or by more active rescues from his escapades. Chiefly Mr. Puddlebox employed his unfailing good-humour as deterrent of Mr. Wriford's fierceness. He learnt to let the starvation, or the exposure to the elements, or the engagement in some wild escapade, go to a certain pitch, then to argue with Mr. Wriford until he made him angry, then by some jovial whimsicality to bring him against his will to involuntary laughter; then Mr. Wriford would be pliable, consent to eat, to take shelter, to cease his folly. Much further than this Mr. Puddlebox carried the affection he had conceived for Mr. Wriford—and all it cost him. Once when lamentably far gone in his cups, he was startled out of their effects by becoming aware that Mr. Wriford was producing from his pockets articles that glistened beneath the moon where it lit the open-air resting-place to which he had no recollection of having come.

He stared amazed at two watches, a small clock, spoons, and some silver trinkets; and soon by further amazement was completely sobered. "I've done it," said Mr. Wriford, and in his eyes could be seen the gleam, and in his voice heard the nervous exaltation, that always went with accomplishment of any of his fiercenesses. "I've done it! It was a devil of a thing—right into two bedrooms—but I've done it."

Mr. Puddlebox in immense horror: "Done what?"

"Broken in there," and Mr. Wriford jerked back his head in "there's" indication, and Mr. Puddlebox, to his new and frantic alarm, found that a large house stood within fifty paces of them, they in its garden.

"Why, you're—hup!"—cried Mr. Puddlebox—"Blink! Why, what to the devil do you mean—broken in there? What are we,—hup, blink!—doing here?"

"Why, we had a bet," said Mr. Wriford, looking over his prizes and clearly much pleased with himself. "I bet you as we came down the road that I'd break in here before you would. I took the front and you went to the back, but you've been asleep."

"Asleep!" cried Mr. Puddlebox. "I've been drunk. I was drunk." He got on his knees from where he sat and with a furious action fumbled in his coat-tails. From them his bottle of whisky, and Mr. Puddlebox furiously wrenched the cork and hurled the bottle from him. "To hell with it!" cried Mr. Puddlebox as it lay gurgling. "Hell take it. I'll not touch it again. Why, loony—why, you staring, hup! hell! mad loony, if you'd been caught you'd have gone to convict prison, boy. And my fault for this cursed drink. Give me those things. Give them to me and get out of here—get up the road."

"Let 'em alone!" said Mr. Wriford menacingly. "What d'you want with 'em?"

Mr. Puddlebox played the game learnt of experience. He concealed his agitation. He said with his jolly smile: "Why, mean that I will not be beat at anything by you or by any man. I will challenge you or any man at any game and will be beat by none. You've been in and got 'em, boy; now, curse me, I will equal you and beat you for that I will go in and put them back. Play fair, boy. Hand over."

"Well, there you are," said Mr. Wriford, disarmed and much tickled.

"Out you go then, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox, gathering up the trinkets. "Out into the road. You had none of me to interfere with you, and I must have none of you while I go my own way to this."

Mr. Puddlebox took Mr. Wriford to the gate of the grounds, then went back again in much trembling. An open window informed him of Mr. Wriford's place of entry. He leant through to a sofa that stood handy, there deposited the trinkets, and very softly shut the window down. When he rejoined Mr. Wriford, fear's perspiration was streaming from him. "I've had a squeak of it," said Mr. Puddlebox with simulated cheeriness. "Let's out of this, and I'll tell you."

He walked Mr. Wriford long, quickly and far. While he walked he fought again the battle that had been swift victory when he cast his bottle from him; and in future days fought it again and met new tortures in each fight.

"Aren't you going to get any whisky?" asked Mr. Wriford when on a day, pockets lined with harvest money, he noticed Mr. Puddlebox's abstinence.

"Whisky! Hell take such stinking stuff," cried Mr. Puddlebox and sucked in his cheeks—and groaned; then put a hand in his tail-pocket and felt a hard lump rolled in a cloth that lay where the whisky used to lie and said to himself: "Two bottles—two bottles."

It was Mr. Puddlebox's promise to himself, and his lustiest weapon in his battles with his desire, that, on some day that must come somehow, the day when he should be relieved of his charge of Mr. Wriford, he would buy himself two bottles of whisky and sit himself down and drink them. Into the hard lump rolled in the cloth, and composing it, there went daily when his earnings permitted it two coppers. When that sum reached eighty-four—two at three-and-six apiece—his two bottles would be ready for the mere asking.

Wherefore "Two bottles! Two bottles!" Mr. Puddlebox would assure himself when most fiercely his cravings assailed him, and against the pangs of his denial would combine luxurious thoughts of when they should thus be slaked and fears of what might happen to his loony if he now gave way to them.

Much those fears—or the affection whence they rose—cost him in these later days: swiftly their end approached. Much and more as summer passed and autumn came sombrely and chill: swiftly their end as sombre day succeeded sombre day, and they passed down into Cornwall and went along the sombre sea. Village to village, through nature in decay that grey sky shrouded, grey sea dirged: Mr. Puddlebox ever for tarrying when larger town was reached, Mr. Wriford ever for onward—onward, on.

CHAPTER II
CROSS WORK

Ever for onward, Mr. Wriford—onward, onward, on!

Where, in the bright days, Mr. Puddlebox had taken the lead and suggested their road and programme, now, in the sombre days, chill in the air, and in the wind a bluster, Mr. Wriford led. He chose the roughest paths. He most preferred the cliff tracks where wind and rain drove strongest, or down upon the shingle where walking was mostly climbing the great boulders that ran from cliff to sea. He walked with head up as though to show the weather how he scorned it. He walked very fast as though there was something he pursued.

Mr. Puddlebox did not like it at all. Much of Mr. Puddlebox's jolly humour was shaken out of him in these rough and arduous scrambles, and he grumbled loud and frequent. But very fond of his loony, Mr. Puddlebox, and increasingly anxious for him in this fiercer mood of his.

There are limits, though: and these came on an afternoon wild and wet when Mr. Wriford exchanged the cliff road for the shore and pressed his way at his relentless pace along a desolate stretch cut into frequent inlets by rocky barriers that must be toilsomely climbed, a dun sea roaring at them.

"Why, what to the devil is it you're chasing, boy?" Mr. Puddlebox's grumblings at last broke out, when yet another barrier surmounted revealed another and a steeper little beyond. "Here's a warm town we've left," cried Mr. Puddlebox, sinking upon a great stone, "and here's as wet, cold, and infernal a climbing as I challenge you or any man ever to have seen. Here's you been dragging and trailing and ripe for anything these three months and more, and now rushing and stopping for nothing so I challenge the devil himself to keep up with you."

"Well, don't keep up!" said Mr. Wriford fiercely. "Who wants you to?"

Mr. Puddlebox blinked at that; but he answered stoutly: "Well, curse me if I do, for one."

"Nor me for another," said Mr. Wriford and turned where he stood and pressed on across the shingle towards the next rocky arm.

Mr. Puddlebox sucked in his cheeks, felt at the hard lump in his pocket, then followed at a little run, and caught Mr. Wriford as Mr. Wriford climbed the further barrier of rocks.

"Hey, give us a hand, boy," cried Mr. Puddlebox cheerfully. "This is a steep one."

Mr. Wriford looked down. "What, are you coming on? I thought you'd stopped."

"You're unkind, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox.

Mr. Wriford, looking down, this time saw the blink that went with the words. He jumped back lower, coming with reckless bounds. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry. Look here, coming across this bit"—he pointed back to their earlier stopping-place—"I felt—I felt rotten to think you'd gone."

"Why, that's my loony!" cried Mr. Puddlebox, highly pleased. "Come down here, boy. Let's talk of this business."

"But I wouldn't look back," said Mr. Wriford, "or come back. I've done with that sort of thing."

"Why, so you have," said Mr. Puddlebox, rightly guessing to what Mr. Wriford referred. "You can come down now, though, for I'm asking you to, so there's no weakness in that. There's shelter here."

"I don't want shelter," said Mr. Wriford, and went a step higher and stood with head and back erect where gale and rain caught him more full.

Mr. Puddlebox summoned much impressiveness into his voice. "Boy," said Mr. Puddlebox, "this is a fool's game, and I never saw such even with you. Bring sense to it, boy. Tramping is well enough for fine days: winters for towns. There's money to be found in towns, boy; and if no money, workhouse is none so bad, and when we've tried it you've liked it and called it something new, which is what you want. Well, there's nothing new this way, boy. There's no work and there's no bed in the fields winter-time. Nothing new this way, boy."

A fiercer drive of wind spun Mr. Wriford where he stood exposed. He caught at a rock with his hands and laughed grimly, then stood erect again, and pressed himself against the rising gale.

"Ah, isn't there, though?" he cried. "Man, there's cold and rain and wind, and there's tramping on and on against it and feeling you don't care a damn for it."

"Well, curse me, but I do," returned Mr. Puddlebox. "It's just what I do mind, and there's no sense to it, boy. There's no sense to it."

"There is for me," Mr. Wriford cried. "It's what I want!" He turned from fronting the gale. Mr. Puddlebox saw him measuring with his eye the height where he stood from the ground, and called in swift alarm: "Don't jump! You'll break your legs. Don't—"

Mr. Wriford laughed aloud, jumped and came crashing to his hands and knees, got up and laughed again. "That's all right!" said he.

"Boy, that's all wrong," said Mr. Puddlebox very seriously. "That's all of a part with your rushing along as if it was the devil himself you chased; and what to the devil else it can be I challenge you to say or any man."

Mr. Wriford took up the words he had cried down from the top of the barrier. "It's what I want," he told Mr. Puddlebox. "Cold and not minding it, and fighting against the wind and not minding it, and getting wet and going on full speed however rough the road and not minding that. Cold and wind and rain and sticking to it and fighting it and beating it and liking it—ah!" and he threw up his arms, extending them, and filled his chest with a great breath, as though he embraced and drunk deep of the elements that he stuck to and fought and beat.

Mr. Puddlebox looked at him closely. "Sure you're liking it?" he asked, his tone the same as when he often inquired: "Sure you're happy, boy?"

"Sure! Why, of course I'm sure. Why, all the time I'm thrashing along, do you know what I'm saying? I'm saying: 'Beating you! Beating you! Beating you!' and at night I lie awake and think of it all waiting outside for me and how I shall beat it, beat it, beat it again when morning comes."

"Sit down," said Mr. Puddlebox. "I've something to say to you."

"No, I'll stand," said Mr. Wriford.

"Aren't you tired?"

"I'm fit to drop," said Mr. Wriford; and then with a hard face: "But sitting down is giving way to it. I'll not do that. No, by God, I'll beat it all the time."

Then Mr. Puddlebox broke out in exasperation and struck his stick upon the shingle to mark it. "Why, curse me if I ever heard such a thing or knew such a thing!" cried Mr. Puddlebox. "Beating it! I've told you a score time, and this time I give it to you hot, that when you go so, you're spooked, spooked to hell and never will be unspooked! 'Beating it, beating it, beating it!' you cry as you rush along! Why, it's then that it is beating you all the time, for it is of yourself that you are thinking. And that's what's wrong with you, thinking of yourself, and has always been. And there's no being happy that way and never will be. Think of some one else, boy. For God Almighty's sake think of some one else or you're beat and mad for sure!"

Mr. Wriford gave him back his fierceness. "Think of some one else! That's what I've done all my life. That's what locked me up and did for me. I've done with all that now, and I'm happy. Think of some one else! God!" cried he and snapped his fingers. "I don't care that for anybody. Whom should I think of?"

"Well, try a thought for me," cried Mr. Puddlebox, relenting nothing of his own heat. "I've watched you these four months. I've got you out of trouble. Curse me, I've fed you and handled you like a baby. But for me you'd like be lying dead somewhere."

"Well, who cares?" cried Mr. Wriford. "Not me, I don't."

"Ah, and you'd liker still be clapped in an asylum and locked there all your days; you'd mind that. But for me that's where you'd be and where you'll go, if I left you to-morrow."

Mr. Wriford cried with a black and angry face: "Well, if it's true, who asked you to hang on to me? Why have you done it? If it's true, mind you! For I've done my share. You've admitted that yourself. In the rows we've got into I've done my share, and in the work we've done I've done more than my share, once I've learnt the hang of it. Now then! That's true, isn't it? If you've done so jolly much, why have you? There's one for you. Why?"

His violent storming put a new mood to Mr. Puddlebox's face. Not the exasperation with which he had burst out and continued till now. That left him. Not the jolly grin with which commonly he regarded life in general and Mr. Wriford in particular. None of these. A new mood. The mood and hue Mr. Wriford had glimpsed when, looking down from the barrier as Mr. Puddlebox overtook him, and crying down to him: "I thought you'd stopped," he had seen Mr. Puddlebox blink and heard him say: "You're unkind, boy." Now he saw it again—and was again to see it before approaching night gave way to following morn.

Mr. Puddlebox blinked and went redly cloudy in the face. "Why?" said he. "Well, I'll tell you why, boy. Because I like you. I liked you, boy, when you came wretched up the Barnet road and thought there was one with you, following you. I liked you then for you were glad of my food and my help and caught at my hand as night fell and held it while you slept. Curse me, I liked you then, for, curse me, you were the first come my way in many years of sin that thought me stronger than himself and that I could be stronger to and could help. I liked you then, boy, and I've liked you more each sun and moon since. I've lost a precious lot in life through being what, curse me, I am. None ever to welcome me, none ever to be glad of me, none ever that minded if I rode by on my legs or went legs first in a coffin cart. Then came you that was loony, that was glad of me here and glad of me there, that asked me this and asked me that, that laughed with me and ate with me and slept with me, that because you was loony was weaker than me. So I liked you, boy; curse me, I loved you, boy. There's why for you."

This long speech, delivered with much blinking and redness of the face, was listened to by Mr. Wriford with the fierceness gone out of his eyes but with his face twisting and working as though what he heard put him in difficulty. In difficulty and with difficulty he then broke out. "God knows I'm grateful," Mr. Wriford said, his voice strained as his face. "But look at this—I don't want to be grateful. I don't want that kind of thing. I've been through all that. 'Thank you' for this; and 'Thank you' for that; and 'I beg your pardon;' and 'Oh, how kind of you.' Man, man!" cried Mr. Wriford, striking his hands to his face and tearing them away again as though scenes were before his eyes that he would wrench away. "Man, I've done that thirty years and been killed of it. I don't want ever to think that kind of stuff again. I want just to keep going on and having nothing touch me except what hurts me here in my body and not care a damn for it—which I don't. You're always asking me if I'm happy, and I know you think I'm not. But I am. Look how hard my hands are: that makes me happy just to think of that. And how I don't mind getting wet or cold: that makes me happy, so happy that I shout out with the gladness of it and get myself wetter. It's being a man. It's getting the better of myself. You're going to say it's not. But you don't understand. One man has to get the better of himself one way and one another. With me it's getting the better of being afraid of things. Well, I'm beating it. I'm beating it when I'm out here, tramping along. But when I'm sheltering it's beating me. When you tell me—" He stopped, and stooping to Mr. Puddlebox took his hands and squeezed them so that the water was squeezed to Mr. Puddlebox's eyes. "There!" cried Mr. Wriford. "Grateful! I'm more grateful to you. I'm fonder of you than any man I've ever met. But don't tell me you're fond of me. I don't want that from anybody. When you tell me that it puts me back to what I used to be. I'm grateful. Believe that; but don't make me talk about it."

"I never did want you to," said Mr. Puddlebox. "Look here, boy. Look how we begun on this talk. I told you to think of some one else, care for some one else, and you broke out 'whom were you to care for?' and I gave you, being cold and wet and mortal tired, I gave you 'For God Almighty's sake care for me' and then told you why you should. Well, let's get back to that. Care for me. Look here, boy. We were ten mile to the next village along this devil of a place when we left the town. I reckon we've come four, and here's evening upon us and six to go. Well, I can't go them, and that's the end and the beginning of it. I'm for going back where there's a bed to be had and while yet it is to be had, for they sleep early these parts. Wherefore when I say 'for God Almighty's sake care for me,' I mean stop this chasing this way and let's chase back the way we come. We'll forget what's gone between us," concluded Mr. Puddlebox, reverting to his jolly smiles and getting to his feet, "and I'll hate you and you'll hate me, since that pleases you most, and back we'll get and have a dish of potatoes inside of us and a warm bed outside. Wherefore I say:

"O ye food and warmth, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him for ever."

Mr. Wriford laughed, and Mr. Puddlebox guessed him persuaded once again. But he set his face then and shook his head sharply, and Mr. Puddlebox saw him determined. "No," said Mr. Wriford. "No, I'm not going back. I'm never going back. If you want to know what I'm going to do, I'm going to stay the night out here."

Mr. Puddlebox cried: "Out here! Now what to the devil—"

"I'd settled it," Mr. Wriford interrupted him. "I'd settled it when I thought you'd gone back. There're little caves all along here—I saw one the other side of these rocks. I'm going to sleep in one. I'd made up my mind when you caught up with me. I'm going to do it."

Mr. Puddlebox stared at him, incapable of speech. Then cried: "Wet as you are?"

"Wet as I am," said Mr. Wriford and laughed.

"Cold as it is and going to be colder?"

"Cold as it is and the colder the better."

"You'll stay alone," cried Mr. Puddlebox. "Curse me if I'll stay with you."

"You needn't," said Mr. Wriford. "I'm not asking you to."

"But you think I'm going to," cried Mr. Puddlebox. "And you're wrong, for I'm not. I'm going straight back, and I'm going at once, the quicker to fetch you to your senses. I'm going, boy;" and in advertisement of his intention Mr. Puddlebox began resolutely to move away.

Mr. Wriford as resolutely turned to the barrier of rocks and began to climb.

"Come on, boy," called Mr. Puddlebox.

Mr. Wriford called back: "No. No, I'm going to stay. I'm going to see the night through."

"You'll know where to find me," cried Mr. Puddlebox. "I'll be where we lay last night."

Mr. Wriford's laugh came to him through the gathering gloom, and through the gloom he saw Mr. Wriford's form midway up the rocks. "And you'll know where to find me," Mr. Wriford called.

Mr. Puddlebox paused irresolutely and cursed roundly where he paused. Then turned and stamped away across the shingle. When he reached the rocky arm where first they had quarrelled he stopped again and again looked back. Mr. Wriford was not to be seen.

"That'll go near to kill him if he stays," said Mr. Puddlebox. "And, curse me, if I go back to him he will stay. I'll push on, and he'll follow me. That's the only way to it."

They had spent the previous night in an eating-house where "Beds for Single Men—4d." attracted wanderers. It was seven o'clock when Mr. Puddlebox's slow progression—halting at every few yards and looking back—at length returned him to it. He dried and warmed himself before the fire in the kitchen that was free to inmates of the house.

"Where's your mate?" asked the proprietor. "Thought you was making Port Rannock?"

"Too far," said Mr. Puddlebox; and to the earlier question: "He's behind me. I'll wait my supper till he comes."

He waited, though very hungry. Every time the door of the kitchen opened he turned eagerly in expectation that was every time denied. Towards nine he gave up the comfortable seat he had secured before the blaze and sat himself where he could watch the door. It never admitted Mr. Wriford.

"What's the night?" he asked a seafaring newcomer.

"Blowing up," the man told him. "Blowing up dirty."

Mr. Puddlebox went from the room and from the house, shivered as the night air struck him, and then down the cobbled street. Ten o'clock, borne gustily upon the wind, came to him from the church tower as he turned along the shore.

None saw him go: and he was not to return.

CHAPTER III
WATER THAT TAKES YOUR BREATH

Mr. Puddlebox's landsman's eye showed him no signs of that "blowing up dirty" of which he had been informed. A fresh breeze faced him as he walked and somewhat hindered his progress; but a strong moon rode high and lighted him; the sea, much advanced since he came that way, broke quietly along the shore. "Why, it's none so bad a night to be out," thought Mr. Puddlebox; and there began to change within him the mood in which he had left the lodging-house. Seated there he had imagined a rough night, wet and dark, and with each passing hour had the more reproached himself for his desertion of his loony. Now that he found night clear and still, well-lit and nothing overcold, he inclined towards considering himself a fool for his pains.

An hour on his road brought change of mood again. The very stillness, the very clearness that first had reassured him, now began to frighten him. He began to apprehend as it were a something sinister in the quietude. He began to dislike the persistent regularity of his footsteps grinding in the deep shingle and to dislike yet more the persistent regularity of the breaking waves. They rose about knee-high as he watched them, fell and pressed whitely up the beach, back slowly, as though reluctant and with deep protest of the stones, then massed knee-high and down and up again. Darkly on his right hand the steep cliffs towered.

The monotony of sound oppressed him. He began to have an eerie feeling as though he were being followed, and once or twice he looked back. No, very much alone. Then his footsteps, whose persistent regularity had wrought upon his senses, began to trouble him with their noisiness upon the shingle. He tried to walk less heavily and presently found himself picking his way, and that added to the eeriness, startling him when the loose stones yielded and he stumbled.

He approached that quarter where the shore began to be divided by the rocky barriers that ran from cliff to sea. Then he apprehended what, as he expressed it to himself, was the matter with the sea. It was very full. It looked very deep. What had seemed to him to be waves rolling up now appeared to him as a kind of overflowing, as though not spurned-out waves, but the whole volume of the water welled, swelled, to find more room. The breaking sound was now scarcely to be heard, and that intensified the stillness, and that frightened him more. He began to run....

Mr. Puddlebox stopped running for want of breath; but that physical admission of the mounting panic within him left him very frightened indeed. He went close to the cliffs. Darker there and very shut-up the way they towered so straight and so high. He came away from them, his senses worse wrought upon. Then he came to the first of the rocky barriers that ran like piers from the cliff to the sea, and then for the first time noticed how high the tide had risen. When he came here with Mr. Wriford they had done their climbing far from the cliff's base. Now the barrier was in great part submerged. He must climb it near to the cliff where climbing was steeper and more difficult. Well, there was sand between these barriers, that was one good thing. Walking would be easier and none of that cursed noise that his feet made on the shingle. With much difficulty he got up and looked down upon the other side....

There wasn't any sand. Water where sand had been—water that with that welling, swelling motion pressed about the shingle that banked beneath the cliff.

Mr. Puddlebox said aloud, in a whisper: "The tide!" It was the first time since he had started out that he had thought of it. He looked along the cliff. From where he stood, from where these rocky piers began, the cliff, as he saw, began to stand outwards in a long bluff. The further one went, the further the tide would.... He carried his eyes a little to sea. Beneath the moon were white, uneasy lines. That was where the sea swirled upon the barriers. He looked downwards and saw the placid water welling, swelling beneath his feet.

"The tide," said Mr. Puddlebox again, again in a whisper. He swallowed something that rose in his throat. He ran his tongue around his lips, for they were dry. He shivered, for the perspiration his long walk had induced now seemed to be running down his body in very cold drops. He looked straight above him and at once down to his feet again and moved his feet in steadying of his balance: a sense of giddiness came from looking up that towering height that towered so steeply as to appear hanging over him. He looked along the way he had come; and he stood so close to the cliff-face, and it bulked so enormously before him, that the bay he had traversed seemed, by contrast, to sweep back immensely far—immensely safe.

Mr. Puddlebox watched that safety with unmoving eyes as though he were fascinated by it. The longer he watched the more it seemed to draw him. He kept his eyes upon one distant spot, half way along the bay and high up the shore, and his hypnotic state presented him to himself sitting there—safe. Still with his eyes upon it he moved across the narrow pier in its direction and sat down, legs dangling towards the bay, in the first action of descending. He twisted about to pursue the action, for he was a timid and unhandy climber who would climb downwards facing his hold. As he came to his hands and knees he went forward on them and looked across the fifty yards of shingle-bank, the sea close up, that separated him from the next pier of rocks. He was a creature of fear as he knelt there—a very figure of very ugly fear, ungainly in his form that hung bulkily between his arms and legs, white and loosely fat in his face that peered timorously over the edge, cowardly and useless in his crouching, shrinking pose.

He said aloud, his eyes on the distant barrier: "I'm as safe there—for a peep—as I am here. I can get back. Even if I get wet I can get back."

He shuffled forward and this time put his legs over the other side and sat a while. Here the drop was not more than three feet beneath the soles of his boots as they dangled. He drew them up. "If he's safe, he's safe," said Mr. Puddlebox. "And if he's drowned, he's drowned. Where's the sense of—"

Something that floated in the water caught his eye. A little, round, greyish clump. About the size of a face. Floating close to the shore. Not a face. A clump of fishing-net corks that Mr. Puddlebox remembered to have seen dry upon the sand when first he arrived here. But very like, very dreadfully like a face, and the water rippling very dreadfully over it at each pulsing of the tide. Floated his loony's face somewhere like that? Struggled he somewhere near to shore as that? The ripples awash upon his mouth? His eyes staring? Mouth that had laughed with Mr. Puddlebox these several months? Eyes that often in appeal had sought his own, and that he loved to light from fear to peace, to trust, to confidence, to merriment? Floated he somewhere? Struggled he somewhere? Waited he somewhere for these hands which, when he sometimes caught, proved them at last of use to some one, stronger than some one else's in many years of sin?

Mr. Puddlebox slid to the shingle and ran along it; came to the further barrier and got upon it; stood there in fear. Beyond, and to the next pier, there was no more, between sea and cliff, than room to walk.

His lips had been very dry when, a short space before, looking towards where now he stood, he had run his tongue around them. They were moist then to what, licking them again, his tongue now felt. Cold the sweat then that trickled down his body: warm to what icy stream fear now exuded on his flesh. He had shivered then: now he not shivered but in all his frame shook so that his knees scarcely could support him. Then it was merely safety that he desired: now he realised fear. Then only safety occupied his mind: now cowardice within him, and he knew it. Love, strangely, strongly conceived in these months, called him on: fear, like a live thing on the rock before him, held him, pressed him back. He thought of rippling water awash upon that mouth, and looked along the narrow path before him, and licked his arid lips again: he saw himself with that deep water, that icy water, that thick water, welling, swelling, to his knees, to his waist, to his neck, sucking him adrift—ah! and he looked back whence he had come and ran his tongue again about his ugly, hanging mouth.

"I'm a coward," said Mr. Puddlebox aloud. "I can't come to you, boy," he said. "I've got to go back, boy," he said. "I can't stand the water, boy. I've always been terrified of deep water, boy. I'd come to you through fire, boy; by God, I would. Not through water. I'm a coward. I can't help it, boy. Water takes your breath. I can't do it, boy."

He waited as if he thought an answer would come. There was only an intense stillness. There was only the very tiniest lapping of the water as it welled and swelled: sometimes there was the faint rattle of a stone that the sucking water sucked from the little ridge of pebbles against the cliff.

Mr. Puddlebox looked down upon the water and spoke to it. The words he spoke might have been employed fiercely, but he spoke them scarcely above a whisper as though it were a confidence that he invited of the sea. "Why don't you break and roar?" said Mr. Puddlebox to the sea, bending down to it. "Why don't you break and roar in waves with foam? You'd be more like fire then. There'd be something in you then. It's the dead look of you. It's the thick look of you. Why don't you break and roar? It's the swelling up from under of you. It's the sucking of you. Why don't you break and roar?"

No answer to that. Only the aching stillness. Only the very tiniest, tiniest lapping of the water as it welled and swelled: sometimes the tiny rattle of a stone that from the ridge against the cliff the sucking water sucked.

In that silence Mr. Puddlebox continued to stare at the water. He stared at it; and at its silence, and as he stared, and as silent, motionless, he continued to stare, his face began to work as, in the presence of a sleeper, sudden stealthy resolve might come to one that watched. Then he began to act as though the water were in fact asleep. He looked all round, then he stepped swiftly down to the little ridge. The pebbles gave beneath him and carried his left foot into the water. He stood perfectly still, pressed against the cliff. "Why don't you break and roar?" whispered Mr. Puddlebox. No answer. No sound. He began to tread very cautiously towards the further pier, the palms of his hands against the cliff, and his face anxiously towards the sea, and all his action as though he moved in stealth and thought to give the sea the slip. As he neared the barrier, so neared the cliff the sea. When but twenty yards remained to be traversed the cliff began to thrust a buttress seaward, awash along its base. "Water takes your breath," Mr. Puddlebox had said. A dozen steps took him above his boots, and he began to catch at his breath as the chill struck him. He opened his mouth with the intent to make these sobbing inspirations less noisy than if drawn hissing through his teeth. He slid his feet as if to lift and splash them would risk awakening the sleeping tide. He was to his knees in it when he reached the rocks. Their surface was green in slimy weed: that meant the tide would cover them. He got up, and on his hands and knees upon the slime caught at his breath and peered beyond.

No beach was visible here: only water: perfectly still.

It was a very short way to the next barrier, and of the barrier very short what was to be seen. The buttress of the cliff pressed steadily out to what was no more than a little table of rock, scarcely thicker above the surface than the thickness of a table-top, then seemed to fall away. A trifle beyond the table there upstood a detached pile of rock, rather like a pulpit and standing about a pulpit's height above the water. That table—when it ran far out along the shore—was where Mr. Puddlebox, looking back, had last seen his loony stand. He remembered it, for he remembered the summit of the pulpit rock that peered above it.

The idea to shout occurred to him. That low table seemed to mark a corner. His loony might be beyond it. If he shouted— He did not dare to shout. Here, more than before, the intensity of the silence possessed him. He did not dare to break it. Here, with no beach visible, the water seemed profoundly dead in slumber.

"Why don't you break and roar?" said Mr. Puddlebox. "Why don't you—" he held his breath and crept forward. He lowered himself and caught his breath. His feet crunched upon the shingle bed, the water stood above his knees, and while the stones still moved where he had disturbed them he stood perfectly still. When they had settled he began to move, sideways, very slowly, his back against the cliff. Each sidelong step took him deeper; at each he more sharply caught his breath. It seemed to him as though the cliff were actually pressing him forward with huge hands. He pressed against it with all his force as though to hold it back. It thrust him, thrust him, thrust him. He was deep to his thighs. He was deep to his waist. "Water takes your breath," Mr. Puddlebox had said. At each deepening step more violently his breath seemed to be taken, more clutchingly had to be recalled. He was above his waist. He stumbled and gave a cry and recovered himself and began to go back; tried to control his dreadful breathing; came on again; then again retreated. Now his breathing that had been sobbing gasps became sheer sobs. He suddenly turned from his sidelong progress, went backwards in two splashing strides whence he had come—in three, in four, and then in a panic headlong rush, and as if he were pursued clambered frantically out again upon the slimy rocks.

As if he were pursued—and now, as if to sight the pursuit, looked sobbing back upon the water he had churned. There was scarcely a sign of his churning. Scarcely a mark of his track. Still as before the water lay there. Still, and thick, and silent, and asleep, and seemed to mock his fears.

"Blast you!" cried Mr. Puddlebox, responsive to the silent mock. "Blast you, why don't you break and roar?" He put a foot down to it and glared at the water. "Why in hell don't you break and roar?" cried Mr. Puddlebox, and flung himself in again, and splashed to the point at which he had turned and fled, and drew a deep breath and went forward above his waist....

The cliff thrust him out and he was deeper; thrust again, and he was above his waist. "Takes your breath"—he was catching at his breath in immense spasms. The shore dropped beneath his feet and he was to his armpits, the table of rock a long pace away. He was drawn from the cliff, and he screamed in dreadful fear. He tried to go back and floundered deeper. He was drowning, he knew. If he lost his footing—and he was losing it—he would go down, and if he went down he never would rise again. He called aloud on God and screamed aloud in wordless terror. The tide swung him against the cliff and drew him screaming and clutching along it. He stumbled and knew himself gone. His hands struck the table of rock. He clutched, found his feet, sprang frantically, and drew himself upon it. He lay there exhausted and moaning. When his abject mind was able to give words to his moans, "O my Christ, don't let me drown," he said. "Not after that, Christ, don't let me drown. O merciful Christ, not after that."

After a little he opened his eyes that had been shut in bewilderment of blind terror and in preparation of death and that he had not courage or thought to open. He opened his eyes. This is what he saw.

Beneath his chin, as he lay, the still, deep water. Close upon his right hand the cliff that towered upwards to the night. A narrow channel away from him stood the pulpit rock. The cliff ran sharply back from beside him, then thrust again towards the pulpit; stopped short of it and then pressed onwards out to sea. Its backward dip formed a tiny inlet over which, masking it from the open sea, the pulpit rock stood sentinel. The back of the inlet showed at its centre a small cave that had the appearance of a human mouth, open. At low water this mouth would have stood a tall man's height above the beach. A short ridge ran along its upper lip. In the dim light it showed there blackly like a little clump of moustache. From its under lip, forming a narrow slipway of beach up to it, there ran a rubble of stones as if the mouth had emitted them or as if its tongue depended into the sea. The corners of the mouth drooped, and here, as if they slobbered, the water trickled in and out responsive to the heaving of the tide.

Mr. Wriford lay upon this slip. He lay face downwards. His arms from his elbows were extended within the mouth of the cave. His boots were in the water. His legs, as Mr. Puddlebox thought, lay oddly twisted.

CHAPTER IV
WATER THAT SWELLS AND SUCKS

Who is so vile a coward that one weaker than himself, in worse distress, shall not arrest his cowardice? Who that has given love so lost in fear as not to love anew, amain, when out of peril his love is called? Who so base then not to lose in gladness what held his soul in dread?

First Mr. Puddlebox only stared. Water that takes your breath had taken his. Water that takes your breath rose in a thin film over the rock where on his face he lay, passed beneath his body, chilled him anew, and took his breath again. He watched it ooze from under him and spread before him: lip upwards where he faced it and ooze beneath his hands. Then gave his eyes again towards the cave.

Who is so vile a coward? Mr. Puddlebox's teeth chattered with his body's frozen chill: worse, worse, with terror of what he had escaped—God, when that sucking water sucked!—fast, faster with that worse horror he besought heaven "not after that" should overtake him. Who so vile, so base? Ah, then that piteous thing that lay before his eyes! in shape so odd, so ugly—broken? dead? Whom he had seen so wild, so eager? who child had been to him and treated as a child? Who first and only in all these years of sin had looked to him for aid, for counsel, strength? Who must have fought this filthy, cruel, silent, sucking water, and fighting it have called him, wanted him? Ah!

Who is so vile? "Loony," Mr. Puddlebox whispered. "Loony! Hey, boy!"

He only whispered. He did not dare a cry that should demand an answer—and demanding, no answer bring. "Hey, boy! Loony!" He tried to raise his voice. He dared not raise it. Anew and thicker now the water filmed the rock about him. Here was death: well, there was death—that piteous thing....

Then change! Then out of death life! Then gladness out of dread! Then joy's tumult as one beside a form beneath a sheet should see the dead loved move.

About the slipway, as he watched, he saw the swelling water, as if with sudden impulse, swell over Mr. Wriford's boots, run to his knees, and in response the prone figure move—the shoulders raise as if to drag the body: raise very feebly and very feebly drop as if the oddly twisted legs were chained.

Feebly—ah, but in sign of life! Revulsion from fear to gladness brought Mr. Puddlebox scrambling to his feet and upright upon them. To a loud cry there would be answer then! Loudly he challenged it. "Loony!" cried Mr. Puddlebox, his voice athrill. "Hey, boy, what's wrong? I'm coming to you, boy!"

It was a groan that answered him.

"Are you hurt, boy?"

There answered him: "Oh, for God's sake—oh, for God's sake!"

"Why, that's my loony!" cried Mr. Puddlebox in a very loud voice. "Hold on, boy! I'm coming to you!"

Excitedly, in excited gladness his terrors bound up, quickly as he could, catching at his breath as his fears caught him, stifling them in jolly shouts of: "Hold on for me, boy! Why, here I come, boy, this very minute!" he started to make his way, excitedly pursued it.

"Hold on for me, boy!" The cliff along the wall of the inlet against which he stood shelved downwards into the dark, still sea. "Here I come, boy!" He went on his face on the table rock and with his legs felt in the water beneath him and behind him. "Hold on for me, boy!" His feet found a ridge, and he lowered himself to it and began to feel his way along it, his hands against the cliff, above his waist the still, dark sea. "Here I come, boy! This very minute!"

So he cried: so he came—deeper, and now his perils rose to fight what brought him on. Deeper—the water took his breath. "Here I come, boy!" Stumbled—thought himself gone, knew as it were an icy hand thrust in his vitals from the depths, clutching his very heart. "I'm to you now, boy. Here—" Terror burst in a cry to his mouth. He changed it to "Whoa!" He was brought by the ridge on which he walked to a point opposite what of the slipway before the cave stood dry. The ridge ended abruptly. He had almost gone beyond it, almost slipped and gone, almost screamed.

"Whoa!" said Mr. Puddlebox. "Hold on for me, boy!" He took his hands from the cliff and faced about where Mr. Wriford lay. Shaken, he felt his way lower. God, again! Again his foothold terminated! Abruptly he could feel his way no more. Like a hand, like a hand at his throat, the water caught his breath. "Hold on for me, boy!" His voice was thick. "Hold on for me, boy!" Clear again, but he stood, stood, and where he stood the water swayed him. Here the cliff base seemed to drop. Here the depths waited him. Facing his feet he knew must be the wall of the slipway. No more than a long stride—ah, no more! If he launched himself and threw himself, his foot must strike it, his arms come upon its surface where that figure lay. Only a long stride. What, when he made it, if no foothold offered? What if he missed, clutched, fell? He looked across the narrow space. Only that spring's distance that figure lay, its face turned from him. He listened. The silence ached, tingled all about him. Suddenly it gave him from the figure the sound of breathing that came and went in moans.

Who is so vile a coward? Swiftly Mr. Puddlebox crouched, nerved, braced himself to spring. Ah, swifter thrust his mind, and bright as flame and fierce as flame, as a flame shouting, flamed flaming vision before his starting eyes. He saw himself leap. He saw himself clutch, falling—God, he could feel his finger-nails rasp and split!—fallen, gone: rising to gulp and scream, sinking to suffocate and gulp and writhe and rise and scream and gulp and sink and go. Like flame, like flame, the vision leapt—upstreaming from the water, shouting in his ears. Thrice he crouched to spring; thrice like flame the vision thundered: thrice passed as flame that bursts before the wind: thrice left him to the stillness, the sucking water, the sound of moaning breath. A fourth time, a last time: ah, now was gone the very will to bring himself to crouch!

He stood a moment, vacant, only trembling. His senses fluttered back to him, and gone, so they informed him, something that before their flight had occupied them. What? In his shaken state he was again a vacant space searching for it before he realised. Then he knew. There was no sound of breathing....

Trembling he listened for it, staring at the figure. Still; there was no sound. Suddenly he heard it. Dreadfully it came. Feebly, a moaning inspiration: stillness again—then a very little sigh, very gentle, very tiny, and the prone figure quivered, relaxed.

Dead? Again, as on the table rock, afraid to call aloud, "Loony!" Mr. Puddlebox whispered. "Hey, boy!"

No answer. Swelling about him came the creeping water, swayed him, swelled and swayed again: high to his chest, higher now and moving him—moving, sucking, drawing. Here was death: ah, well, wait a moment, for there was death—that piteous thing face downwards there. He spoke softly: "Hey, boy, are you gone?" The water rocked him. He cried brokenly, loudly: "Loony! Are you gone, boy?"

Again, again, life out of death, joy's tumult out of fear!

He saw Mr. Wriford draw down his arms, press on his elbows, raise, then turn towards him his face, most dreadfully grey, most dreadfully drawn in pain.

Who so vile, so base?

Swift, swift revulsion to gladness out of dread. "Why, that's my loony!" cried Mr. Puddlebox in a very loud voice.

Mr. Wriford said: "Have you come?"

"Why, here I am, boy!" He steadied his feet.

Very feebly, scarcely to be heard: "I don't see you."

"Why, there's no more than my nob to be seen, boy! I'm here to my nob in the water." His feet were firm. He braced himself. "I'm to you, boy, and I'm in the most plaguy place as I challenge any man ever to have been." He crouched. "I've to jump, boy, and how to the devil—"

He launched himself. His foot struck the slipway bank—no hold! Smooth rock, and his foot glanced down it! He had thought to spring upward from what purchase his foot might find. It found none. Clutching as he fell, he obtained no more than his arms upon the shingle of the slipway, his chin upon it, his elbows thrusting deep, his fingers clutching in the yielding stones.

"Loony!" Mr. Puddlebox cried. "Loony!"

He slipped further. He suddenly screamed: "Loony, I'm going! Christ, I'm going!"

His face, in line with Mr. Wriford's, two arm's-lengths from it, was dreadfully distorted, his lips wide, his teeth grinding. He choked between them: "Can you help me, boy?"

Mr. Wriford was trying to help him. Mr. Wriford was working towards him on his elbows, his face twisted in agony. As he came, "My legs are broken," he said. "I'll reach you. I'll reach you."

Eye to eye and dreadfully eyed they stared one upon the other. A foot's breadth between them now, and now their fingers almost touching.

"I'm done, boy! Christ, I'm done!" But with the very cry, and with his hand so near to Mr. Wriford's slipped again beyond it, Mr. Puddlebox had sudden change of voice, sudden gleam in the eyes that had stood out in horror. "Curse me, I'm not!" cried Mr. Puddlebox. "Curse me, I've bested it. I've found a hole for my foot. Ease up, boy. I'm to you. By God, I'm to you after all!"

Groan that was prayer of thanks came from Mr. Wriford. Fainting, his head dropped forward on his hands. There was tremendous commotion in the water as Mr. Puddlebox sprang up it from his foothold, thrashing it with his legs as, chest upon the shingle, he struggled tremendously. Then he drew himself out and on his knees, dripping, and bent over Mr. Wriford.

"I'm to you now, boy! You're all right now. Boy, you're all right now."

The swelling water swelled with new impulse up the shingle, washed him where he knelt, ran beneath Mr. Wriford's face, and trickled in the stones beyond it.

Mr. Puddlebox looked back upon it over his shoulder. He could not see the table rock where he had lain. Only the pulpit rock upstood, and deep and black the channel on either hand between it and the walls of their inlet. He looked within the cave mouth before him and could see its inner face. It was no more than a shallow hollowing by the sea. He looked upwards and saw the cliff towering into the night, overhanging as it mounted.

He passed his tongue about his lips.

CHAPTER V
WATER THAT BREAKS AND ROARS

I

In a very little while Mr. Puddlebox had dragged Mr. Wriford the three paces that gave them the mouth of the cave and had sat him upright there, his back against the cliff. Mr. Wriford had groaned while he was being moved, now he opened his eyes and looked at Mr. Puddlebox bending over him.

"Why, that's my loony!" cried Mr. Puddlebox very cheerfully. The flicker of a smile rewarded him and from the moment of that smile he concealed, until they parted, the terrors that consumed him. "Why, that's my loony!" cried he, and went on one knee, smiling confidently in Mr. Wriford's face. "What's happened to you, boy?"

Mr. Wriford said weakly: "I've broken my legs. I think both my legs are broken." He indicated the pulpit rock with a motion of his head. "I climbed up there. Then I thought I'd jump down. Very high and rocky underneath, but I thought of it, and so I did it. I didn't land properly. I twisted my legs."

He groaned and closed his eyes. "Well, well," said Mr. Puddlebox, holding his hands and patting them. "There, boy, there. You're all right now. I'm to you now, boy."

"I suppose I fainted," Mr. Wriford said. "I found it was night and the tide up to my feet. I began to drag myself. I dragged myself up and up, and the tide followed. Is it still coming?"

"You're all right now, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox. "Boy, you're all right now."

He felt a faint pressure from Mr. Wriford's hands that he held; he saw in Mr. Wriford's eyes the same message that the pressure communicated. He twisted sharply on his heels, turning with a fierce and threatening motion upon the water as one hemmed in by ever-bolder wolves might turn to drive them back.

From where he knelt the water was almost to be touched.

II

Mr. Puddlebox got to his feet and stooped and peered within the cave. The moon silvered a patch of its inner face. It gleamed wetly. He looked to its roof. Water dripped upon his upturned face. The cave would fill, when the tide was full. He caught his breath as he realised that, looked out upon the dark, still sea, and caught his breath again. He stepped out backwards till his feet were in the water and looked up the towering cliff. It made him sick and dizzy, and he staggered a splashing step, then looked again. To the line of the indentation that had seemed like a clump of moustache upon the cave's upper lip, the cliff on either hand showed dark. Above that line its slaty hue was lighter.

That was high-water mark.

He went a step forward and stood on tiptoe. The tips of his fingers could just reach the narrow indentation—just the tips of his fingers: and sick again he went and dizzy and came down to his heels and turned and stared upon the dark, still sea.

Then he went to Mr. Wriford again and crouched beside him: took his hands and patted them and smiled at him, but did not speak.

Mr. Wriford spoke. He said tonelessly: "Are we going to drown?"

"Drown?" cried Mr. Puddlebox in a very loud voice. "Why, boy, what to the devil has drowning got to do with it? Drown! I was just thinking, that's all. I was thinking of my supper—pork and onions, boy; and when to the devil I shall have had enough, once I get to it, I challenge you to say or any other man. Drown, boy! Why, these poor twisted legs of yours have got into your head to think of such a thing! You can't be thinking this bit of a splash is going to drown us? Why, listen to this, boy—" and with that Mr. Puddlebox turned to the sea and stretching an arm towards it trolled in a very deep voice:

"O ye sea of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him for ever!

"That's all that bit of a splash is going to do," said Mr. Puddlebox very cheerfully; "going to praise the Lord and going to damp our boots if we let it, which, curse me, we won't. All we've got to think about is where we're going to sit till the water goes back where, curse me, it should always be instead of shoving itself up here. One place is as good as another, boy, and there's plenty of them, but I know the best. Now I'm going to shift you back a bit, loony," Mr. Puddlebox continued, standing upright, "and then we're going to sit together a half-hour or so, and then I'm going to have my pork and onions, and you're going to be carried to bed."

Very tenderly Mr. Puddlebox drew Mr. Wriford back within the cave. "Now you watch me," said Mr. Puddlebox, "because for once in your life I'm the one that's going to do things while you look on. There's only a pair of good legs between us, boy, and that's ample for two of us, but, curse me, they're mine, and I'm going to do what I want with them."

While in jolly accents he spoke thus Mr. Puddlebox was dislodging from the floor of the cave large stones that lay embedded in the shingle and piling them beneath the indentation that showed upon the cave's upper lip. He sang as he worked. Sometimes "O ye sea" as he had trolled before; sometimes "O ye stones;" sometimes, as he tugged at a larger boulder—

"O ye fearful weights, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him for ever!"

Always with each variation he turned a jolly face to Mr. Wriford; always he turned from Mr. Wriford towards the sea that now had reached the pedestal he was building a face that was grey, that twitched in fear.

"O ye whacking great stones, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him for ever!"

Knee-high he built his pedestal, working furiously though striving to conceal his haste. Now he stood in water as he strengthened the pile. Now the water had swelled past it and swelled to Mr. Wriford's outstretched feet. Now Mr. Puddlebox climbed upon the mound of stones and brought his head above the narrow indentation above the cave. It showed itself to be a little ledge. He thrust an arm upon it and found it as broad as the length of his forearm, narrowing as it went back to end in a niche that ran a short way up the cliff. There was room for one to sit there, legs hanging down; perhaps for two—if two could gain it.

Mr. Puddlebox dropped back to the water and now dragged last stones that should make a step to his pile. Then he went to Mr. Wriford.

"Now, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox very cheerfully. "Now I've got the cosiest little seat for you, and now for you to get to it. You can't stand?"

"I can't," Mr. Wriford said.

"Try if I can prop you against the cliff."

He took Mr. Wriford beneath the arms and began to raise him. Mr. Wriford implored: "Don't hurt me!" and as he was raised from the ground screamed dreadfully. "Oh, God! Oh, God, don't, don't;" and when set down again lay feebly moaning: "Don't! Don't!"

There immediately began the most dreadful business.

"Boy," said Mr. Puddlebox, "I've got to hurt you. I'll be gentle as I can, my loony. Boy, you've got to bear it." He abandoned his pretence of their safety, and for his jolly humour that had supported it, permitted voice and speech that denied it and revealed the stress of their position. "Boy, the tide is making on us. It's to fill this cave, boy, before it turns. There's slow drowning waiting for us unless I lift you where I've found a place."

"Let me drown!" Mr. Wriford said. "Oh, let me drown."

The sea drove in and washed the cave on every side. Involuntarily Mr. Wriford cried out in fear and stretched his arms to Mr. Puddlebox, bending above him.

"Come, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox and took him again beneath the arms: again as he was moved he cried: "Don't! Don't!"

"Boy," cried Mr. Puddlebox fiercely, "will you watch me drown before your eyes?"

"Save yourself then. Save yourself."

"By God Almighty I will not. If you won't let me lift you you shall drown me."

Then determinedly he passed his hands beneath Mr. Wriford's arms; then resolutely shut his ears to dreadful cries of pain; then, then the dreadful business. "Boy, I've got to hurt you. I'll be gentle, my loony. Bear it, boy, oh, for Christ's sake bear it. Round my neck, boy. Hold tight. Bear it, boy; bear it."

He carried his arms round Mr. Wriford's back, downwards and beneath his thighs and locked them there. There were dreadful screams; but dreadfully the water swelled about them, and he held on; there were moans that rent him as they sounded; but he spoke: "Bear it, boy; bear it!" and with his burden waded forth.

He faced from the sea and towards the pedestal he had built.

"Loony!"

"Oh, for God's sake, set me down."

"Now I've to raise you."

He began to press upwards with his arms, raising his burden high on his chest.

"Wade out and drown me," Mr. Wriford cried. "If you've any mercy, for God's sake drown me!"

"You're to obey me, boy. By God, you shall obey me, or I'll hurt you worse. Catch in my hair. Hold yourself up by my hair. High as you can. Up, up!"

He staggered upon the steps he had constructed; he gained the pedestal he had made. He thought the strain had become insupportable to him and that he must fall with it. "Now when I lift you, boy, keep yourself up. I'll bring you to my head and then set you back." He called upon himself supremely—raised and failed, raised and failed again. "Now, boy, now!"

He got Mr. Wriford to the ledge and thrust him back; himself he clung to the ledge and almost senseless swayed between his hands and feet.

Presently he looked up. "You're safe now, boy."

Mr. Wriford watched him with eyes that scarcely seemed to see: he scarcely seemed to be conscious.

"I had to speak sharply to you, boy."

Mr. Wriford advanced a hand to him, and he took it and held it. "There was nothing in what I said, boy."

He felt the fingers move in his that covered them. "I had to cry out," Mr. Wriford said weakly. "I couldn't help it."

"You were brave, boy, brave. You're safe now. The water will come to you. But you're safe."

"Come up!" said Mr. Wriford. "Come up!"

"I've to rest a moment, boy," Mr. Puddlebox answered him.

He held that hand while he stood resting. He closed his fingers upon it when presently he spoke again. Now the sea had deepened all about, deep to his knees where he stood. As if the slipway before the cave while it stood dry had somehow abated its volume, it seemed to rise visibly and swiftly now that this last barrier was submerged. All about the walls of the inlet deeply and darkly it swelled, licking the walls and running up them in little wavelets, as beasts of prey, massed in a cage, massing and leaping against the bars.

"There's no great room for me beside you, boy," Mr. Puddlebox said and pressed the fingers that he held.

"Come up," said Mr. Wriford. "Quickly—quickly!"

Mr. Puddlebox looked at the narrow ledge and turned his head this way and that and looked again upon the sea.

III

Now, while he looked and while still he waited, the sea's appearance changed. A wind drove in from seaward and whipped its placid surface. Black it had been, save where the high moon silvered it; grey as it flickered and as it swelled about the cliff it seemed to go. It had welled and swelled; now, from either side the pulpit rock that guarded their inlet, it drove in in steeply heaving mass that flung within the cave and all along the cliff and that the cave and cliff flung back. It were as if one with a whip packed this full cage fuller yet, and as though those caged within it leapt here and there and snapped the air with flashing teeth.

"Now I'll try for it, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox. "These stones are shaking under me."

Mr. Wriford withdrew his hand and with his hands painfully raised himself a little to one side. The action removed his back from the crevice up the cliff face in which it had rested. A growth of hardy scrub clung here, and Mr. Puddlebox thrust forward his hand and pulled on it.

"Now I'll try for it, boy," he said again. He looked up into Mr. Wriford's face. "There's nothing to talk about twixt you and me, loony," he said. "We've had some rare days since you came down the road to me, boy. If this bush comes away in my hand and I slip and go, why there's an end to it, boy, and as well one way as another. Don't you be scared."

"I shall hold you," Mr. Wriford said. Intensity filled out and strengthened his weak voice. "I shall hold you. I'll never let you go."

There began some protest out of Mr. Puddlebox's mouth. It was not articulated when the rising sea mastered at last the stones beneath his feet; drove from him again his courage; returned him again his panic fear; and he cried out, and swiftly crouched and sprang. He achieved almost his waist to the level of the ledge. He swept up his other hand to the scrub in the crevice and fastened a double grip within it. It was hold or go, but the scrub held and his peril that he must hold or go gave him immense activity. He drew himself and forced himself. His knee nearer to Mr. Wriford came almost upon the ledge, and Mr. Wriford caught at the limb and gripped it as with claws. "Your other knee!" Mr. Wriford cried. "Higher! For God's sake a little higher!"

The further knee struck the ledge wide out where it no more than showed upon the cliff.

"Higher! Higher!"

Horribly from Mr. Puddlebox, as from one squeezed in the throat and in death straining a last word: "Hold me! Hold me, boy! Don't let me drown in that water!"

"Higher! Higher!"

"Don't let me drown—don't let me drown in that water!"

"Higher! An inch—an inch higher."

The inch was gained. "Now! Now!"

The knee dug into the very rock upon its inch of hold, Mr. Puddlebox clutched higher in the scrub, drew up his other leg, drew in his knees and knelt against the cliff.

Unstrung, and breathing in spasmodic clutches of his chest, he remained a space in that position, and Mr. Wriford collapsed and in new pain leant back where he sat. Presently, and very precariously, Mr. Puddlebox began to twist about and lowered himself to sit upon the ledge. The crevice where the ledge was broadest was between them. Mr. Puddlebox with his left hand held himself in his seat by the scrub that filled this niche, and when Mr. Wriford smiled weakly at him and weakly murmured, "Safe now," he replied: "There's very little room, boy," and looked anxiously upon the sea that now in angry waves was mounting to them. He looked from there to the dark line on either hand that marked the height of the tide's run. The line was level with his waist as he sat. He looked at Mr. Wriford and saw how narrow his perch, and down to the sea again. He said to himself: "That's four times I've been a dirty coward." He said in excuse: "Takes your breath," and caught his breath and looked upon the sea.

IV

Now was full evidence, and evidence increasing, of that "blowing up dirty" of which he had been informed, and which the stillness of the swelling water had seemed to falsify. "Why don't you break and roar?" Mr. Puddlebox had asked the sea. White and loud it broke along the cliff, snatching up to them, falling away as beasts that crouch to spring, then up and higher and snatching them again. The moon, as if her watch was up, withdrew in clouds and only sometimes peered. The wind, as if he now took charge, came strongly and strongly called the sea. The sea, as if the moon released it, broke from her stilly bonds and gave itself to vicious play. Strongly it rose. It reached their hanging feet. Stronger yet as night drew on, and now set towards the corner of the inlet nearer to Mr. Wriford's side and there, repulsed, washed up, and there, upspringing, washed in a widening motion towards their ledge.

They sat and waited, rarely with speech.

At long intervals Mr. Puddlebox would say: "Boy!"

No more than a moan would answer him.

"That's all right, boy."

V

Quite suddenly the water came. Without premonitory splash or leap of spray, quite suddenly, and strongly, deeply, that widening motion where the sea leapt in its corner came like a great hand sweeping high and washed the ledge from end to end—like a hand sweeping and, of its suddenness and volume, raised and swept and shook them where they sat.

At this its first coming, neither spoke of it. There was only a gasp from each as each was shaken. It did not seem to be returning.

After a space, "Boy!" said Mr. Puddlebox again.

"Well? ... well?"

"That's all right, boy."

He clung with his left hand to the scrub. He brought over his right and rested it upon Mr. Wriford's that held the ledge. "Is the pain bad, boy?"

"I'm past pain. I don't feel my legs at all."

"Cold, boy?"

"I don't feel anything. I keep dreaming. I think it's dreaming."

"That's all right, boy."

Again, and again suddenly, that sweeping movement swept them—stronger in force, greater in volume. It swept Mr. Wriford towards Mr. Puddlebox. It almost dislodged him. He was pressed back and down by Mr. Puddlebox's hand, and again the water came. They were scarcely recovered, and once again it struck and shook them.

Now they sat waiting for its onsets. Now the gasp and dreadful struggle while the motion swept and sucked was scarcely done when on and fierce and fiercer yet again it came and shook them.

Now what happened—long in the telling—happened very quickly.

"It's the end—it's the end," Mr. Wriford sobbed—his gasps no more than sobbing as each snatch came. "God, God, it's the end!"

"Hell to the end!" cried Mr. Puddlebox fiercely and fiercely holding him. "Loony, there's nothing here to end us! Boy, do you mind that coastguard we passed early back? He walks here soon after daybreak, he told us, when this bloody tide is down. He'll help me carry you down. Boy, with your back in this niche here you're safe though the sea washes ever so. I'm going to leave you to it. Wedge in, boy."

He began to sidle away.

Fiercely the sweeping movement struck them, stopping Mr. Wriford's protest, driving him to the ledge's centre, all but carrying Mr. Puddlebox whence he clung.

He thrust Mr. Wriford against the niche and roughly tore his hand from Mr. Wriford's grasp.

"What are you doing?" Mr. Wriford cried. "Giving me your place—no, no—!"

Fiercely was answered: "Hell to giving my place! Not me, curse me! I'm going for safety, boy." He indicated the pulpit rock whose surface dryly upstood before them. "Easy to get on there. I'm going to swim there."

"You can't swim! No—you shall not—no!"

Again the beat of rushing water. Scarcely seated where he had edged, Mr. Puddlebox was dragged away, clung, and was left upon the ledge's last extremity. As glad and radiant as ever it had been, the old jolly beam came to his face, to his mouth the old jolly words. "Swim! Why, boy, I'd swim that rotten far with my hands tied. Curse me, I'd never go if I couldn't. Swim! Why, curse me, I will swim you or any man, and I challenge any to the devil to best me at it. Wedge back, boy. Wedge back."

He turned away his jolly face, and to the waiting water turned a face drawn and horrible in fear.

Water that takes your breath!

He swung himself forward on his hands and dropped. He drowned instantly.

* * * * * * * *

There had been no pretence of swimming. There seemed to be no struggle. In one moment he had been balancing between his hands in seated posture on the ledge. In the next down and swallowed up and gone.

Eyes that looked to see him rise and swim stared, stared where he was gone and whence he came not: then saw his body rise—all lumped up, the back of its shoulders, not its head. Then watched it, all lumped up, slightly below the surface, bobbed tossing round the cliff within the inlet: out of sight in the further corner: now bumping along the further wall: now submerged and out of view. Now washed against the pulpit rock: now a long space bumping about it: now drawn beyond it: gone.

BOOK FOUR
ONE OF THE OLDEST ONES

CHAPTER I
KINDNESS WITHOUT GRATITUDE

I

In the place where Mr. Wriford next found himself he first heard the reverberant thunder of the sea. He realised with sudden terror that he was not holding on; and as one starting out of bad dreams—but he had no dreams—in sudden terror he clutched with both his hands. That which his hands clutched folded soft and warm within their grasp, and then he heard a pleasant voice say:

"Why, there you are! You've kept us waiting a long time, you know!"

He found he was in a bed. A man, and two women who wore white aprons and caps and nice blue dresses, stood at its foot and were smiling at him. The sun was shining on their faces, and it was through windows behind him that the sound of the sea came. While, very puzzled, he watched these smiling strangers, the man stepped to him and slipped firm, reassuring fingers about his wrist where his hand lay clutching the blue quilt that covered him.

"No need to cling on like that, you know," said the man, disengaging his grasp. "You're all right now."

Mr. Wriford made one or two attempts at speech. "I don't—I don't think I—I don't think—"

He checked himself each time. His voice sounded so weak and strange that he thought each time to better it. He was not successful; and he let it go as it would with: "I don't think I ought to be here."

The women smiled at that, and the man said: "Well, I don't know where else you should be, I'm sure. You're very comfortable here."

"You're just in the middle of a nice sleep, you know," said one of the women, bending over the bed-rail towards him. "I think I should just finish it if I were you."

The other one said: "Would you like to hold my hand again?"

"There's an offer for you," said the man. "I'm sure I would."

There was a sound of quiet laughter, and the woman who had last spoken came to a chair by Mr. Wriford's side and sat down and took his hand. He somehow felt that that was what he had wanted, and he closed his eyes.

Thereafter he often—for moments as brief as this first meeting—saw the three again; and learnt to smile when he saw them, responsive to the smiles they always had for him, and became accustomed to their names of "Doctor" and "Sister" and "Nurse." It was "Nurse" who sat beside him and held his hand. When he awoke—or whatever these brief glimpses of these kind strangers were—he always awoke with that same startled clutching as when he had first seen them. If it was only the warm folding stuff that his hands felt he would cling on a moment, vacantly terrified. When Nurse's hand was there he felt all right at once and learnt to smile a kind of apology.

Once—or one day, he had no consciousness of time—when he thus clutched and felt her hand and smiled, she said: "You shouldn't start like that. You needn't now, you know."

"I don't know why I do," he told her.

She said: "I expect you're thinking of—"

But Mr. Wriford wasn't thinking at all. He was only rather vacantly puzzled when he saw his three kind friends. Beyond that his mind held neither thoughts nor dreams.

II

Thought came suddenly in a very roundabout way. Nurse had a very childish face. Her skin was very pink and white, and her eyes very blue, and there was something very childish, almost babyish, about her soft brows and about her rosy mouth. Her face began to have a place with Mr. Wriford, not only when he looked at it, but when he was sleeping. When he was sleeping, though, it had a different body, a different dress. It thus, in that different guise, was with him when one day he awoke and saw her bending close over him, smiling at him. He said at once, the word coming to him without any searching for it, without conscious intention of pronouncing it: "Brida!"

She said "What?" Now thoughts were visibly struggling in his eyes. Nurse could see them changing all the aspect of his face, as though his eyes were a pool up into which, stirred by that word, thoughts came streaming as stilly depths are stirred from their clearness by some fish that darts along their floor and upward clouds their bed. She turned her head and whispered sharply: "Sister!" then back to him and asked him: "What a pretty name! Brida, did you say?"

His mind was rushed long past the word that had awakened it. First, with that awakening, had come the moment when first he had spoken it—"I'm going to call you Brida!" St. James's Park; dusk falling; the rustle of October leaves about their feet; her flower face redly suffused.... More than that called him. More! In this sudden tumult of his brain, these beating pulses, all these noises, more, more than these demanded recognition; fiercely some clamour called him on to emotions that wrapped up these, submerged, enveloped them. There had been one in these emotions that claimed him more than she; there had been fears, pains, perils in them—ah, here with a sudden, overwhelming rush they came! "Wedge in, boy! Wedge in!" He that had called those words was swinging on his hands—hands that had held him!—was swinging on his hands above the swirling water—was down, was gone!

Mr. Wriford screamed out shockingly: "You couldn't swim! You couldn't swim!"

Sister was saying: "There, there! Don't, don't! You're all right now! You're all right now! Look, Nurse will hold your hand."

He stared at her. He said brokenly: "Let me alone! Let me alone!"

"Shan't Nurse hold your hand?"

"Please let me alone."

III

He only wanted to be alone—alone with his thoughts that now were full and clear returned to him—alone with that grotesque figure with that grotesque name who had come to him through the water and for him had gone into the water—and could not swim, could not swim!

He slept and awoke now and lay awake in normal periods. He smiled at Nurse and Sister and Doctor but did not talk. He only wanted to be alone. He would lie through the day for hours together with wide, staring eyes, submitting passively when some one came to attend him or to feed him, but never speaking. He only wanted to be alone.

Strangers came sometimes—ladies with flowers, mostly. He came to recognize them. They smiled at him, and he smiled responsively at them. But never spoke. He only wanted to be alone. When they were quite strangers—visitors he had not seen before—he always heard Sister bringing them with the same words: "This is our very interesting patient. Yes, this is the private ward. It is rather nice, isn't it? Our interesting patient. Poor fellow, he—" and then whispering, and then Sister at the foot of the bed with some one who smiled and nodded and said: "Good morning. I hope you are better."