There was a long silence.
"Did not O"Hara tell you to make no more efforts for my escape?" asked Hogarth.
"Who is O"Hara?"
"Why, the priest who escaped, instead of me, through the copse".
"O"Hara was not the name he gave me; and no, he said nothing about that. I got him off to America, and only saw him twice. I thought him rather--But why didn"t you escape youself?"
"I thought it improper".
"But you did finally?"
"For a reason: you remember the a.s.sociation which I was forming to answer the question as to the cause of misery? Well, that question I have answered for myself in prison".
"Really? Tell me!"
Hogarth absently took up a water-colour drawing from the table, and turned it round and round, leaning forward on a knee, as he told how the matter was. Meantime, he kept his eyes fixed upward upon Loveday"s face, who stood before him.
In the midst of his talk Loveday scratched the top of his head, where the hair was rather thin, and said he, twisting round: "Forgive me-let me ring for some brandy-and-soda--"
Hogarth stood briskly up.
"What I say, I can see, is not new to you?" said he.
"No, not new", Loveday confessed: "I believe that it is quite an ancient theory; there are even savage tribes whose land-tenure is not unlike what you advocate--the Basutos, for example".
"And are these Basutos richer, happier, prettier fellows than average Englishmen?"
"Oh, beyond doubt. Don"t suppose that I am gainsaying you: I am only showing you that the theory is not new--"
"But why do you persist in calling it a _theory?_ Is the fact that one and one make two a _theory?_"--Hogarth"s brow growing every moment redder.
"What can one call it?"
"Call it what you like! But do you believe it?"
"It is quite possibly true; and now that you say it I believe it; but I have never seriously considered the matter."
"Why not?"
"Because--I don"t know. It is out of my line".
"Your line! Yet you are a human being--"
"Well, partly, yes: say--a novelist".
"Do not jest! It is incredible to me that you have written book after book, and knew of this divine thing, and did not cram your books with it!"
Loveday flushed. "You misunderstand my profession; and as to this theory of land-tenure, let me tell you: it will never be realized--not in England. Anyway, it would mean civil war...."
Again those words! "Civil war...."
And as, for the second time, he heard them, Hogarth dashed the picture which he held to the ground, shattering gla.s.s and frame: which meant that, then and there, he washed his hands of the world and its wagging; meant also his return to Colmoor.
He dashed from the room without a word; down the stairs; out into the street.
As he ran along the King"s Road, he asked a policeman the way to the nearest police-station, then ran on through a number of smaller streets, seeking it, till, at a corner, he stopped, once more uncertain, the night dim and drizzling.
He was about to set off again, when, behind him, he heard: "Excuse me, mister--could you give a poor man a penny to get a night"s lodging?"
Turning, he saw--old Tom Bates: still in the guernsey; but very senile and broken now.
The fish-rich fisher...! he had come to this...
Hogarth had twenty-eight shillings about him, and, without disclosing himself, put hand to pocket to give them all, just as the old man reached up to his ear to say: "It"s the lumbago; I got it very bad; but it won"t be long now. It wur a bad day for me as ever I come to Lunnon!
I"m Norfolk born, I am: and I had eight sons, which the last was Fred, who, they say, met his death in Colmoor...."
At that word, "Fred", Hogarth started: for under the elm in the beech-wood between Thring and Priddlestone Fred had concealed a thing fallen from heaven, which could be sold for--a thousand pounds.
That would keep the fisher rich during the few days that remained to him!
But the old man could hardly go himself; if he could, would bungle: the thing was heavy--on the lord-of-the-manor"s land....
Do a kind act, Hogarth. He would see the old place, his father"s grave; and there was a girl who lived in the Hall at Westring whom it was a thrilling thing to be near, even if one did not see....
"Here are two shillings", said he, in an a.s.sumed voice: "and if you be at this spot, at this hour, on Thursday night coming, you shall have more. Don"t fail".
Again he ran, and took train, two hours later, for Beccles.
XXIII
UNDER THE ELM
His risk of arrest here, round about his old home, was enormous, and he drew the Bedouin kefie well round his face, skulking from the station to the "Fen", northward, where he got an urchin to buy him a paper lantern in a general shop, and now trudged up to Priddlestone, then down through meadows to the beech-wood, the night rough with March winds.
It was not the winds, however, which made him draw close his Arab cloak, but his approach to the elm: there, one night, he had seen a naked black man! there had fallen the Arab Jew.
He stood twenty yards from the tree, till, with sudden resolution, he strode, soon had the lantern ruby, and since the grave of "the affair"
had been digged with a piece of wood, for such a piece he went seeking, having thrown off his caftan.
Instead, he found the rusted half-blade of a spade, and commenced to dig round the roots, the lantern shine reddening a face strangely agitated, uncertainty of finding what he sought heightening his excitement: for the earth showed no disturbance, and since three years had pa.s.sed since that night of Bates in the wood, the object might have been already unearthed. After an hour his back was aching, his hands dabbled, his brow beaded, while the night-winds blew, the light now was commoved, and now glowed a steady red; and still he grovelled.
Presently, as he shovelled in a circle, always two feet deep, moving the light as he moved, he saw on the top of a shovelful of marl--a twig: barkless, black, cracked--_scorched!_