A certain man....

Chapter I

John Ffoulkes, sitting at his writing table, gazing out through the one rather dingy window of his sitting-room at the row of mean houses opposite, depressing in a mon¬ otony which even the spring sunshine failed to alleviate, felt a sudden rush of longing settle upon his soul for the little stone-built house on the Cornish coast which had been the home of his childhood and youth; for just one glimpse of the blue sea as he could fancy it would be look¬ ing on such a day as this, with the sunlight diving into the cool trough of the waves and shining green and lambent through the crests of the great curling breakers with their fringe of white foam, as they raced shorewards to dash them¬ selves against the towering cliffs. He could picture the fish¬ ing boats slipping out between the gray weather-beaten piers of the primitive harbour to make for the open sea outside the bay, there to ride up and down on the swell while the crews waited for the school of mackerel to sweep in and fill their ready nets. The men would be calling to one another across the water in the dear familiar west country accent while the gulls, circling overhead, screeched in a frenzy of excitement at the prospect of a meal which would not entail any strenuous efforts on their parts.

The headlands, stretching their great arms into the sea, would be ablush with sea-pinks at this time of the year. On the cliffs the gorse bushes would be flaunting their golden splendour and trying to outshine the sun itself, whilst the spray, thrown up by the thundering waves as they beat impotently against the feet of those same cliffs, would look like a handful of jewels tossed carelessly into the air by some giant hand, as the light caught and be¬ dizened them with all the colours of the rainbow.

So vivid was the picture John Ffoulkes’ imagination painted for him that, for the moment, the drab street out¬ side his window ceased to exist, as far as he was con¬ cerned; his eyes, instead of looking out on to patched and discoloured walls of dirty yellow brick, saw, as if it were actually before him, a limitless expanse of rolling waters stretching away to the far horizon and so realistic was the vision that he found himself drawing in deep breaths as though he were veritably able to inhale the brine-laden air blowing straight across the Atlantic from Newfoundland.

It was not often that John rebelled against the state of life to which he had been called, but on the rare occasions when he did he realised something of what a caged wild animal feels as it paces restlessly up and down behind the bars which separate it from freedom. Go into the lionhouse at the Zoological Gardens next time you are in that direction and watch one of the beasts who has known what liberty means and you will see, reflected in its eyes, not the crowd of curious sight-seers, not the iron bars of its cage but the trackless impenetrable jungle, the mystery of the bush on a moonlight night with its deep shadows barred with silver streaks, the barely perceptible movement of the thick undergrowth as some denizen of the forest makes his cautious way to the drinking pool, fearful of meeting an implacable foe ready to pounce and fasten its cruel claws in its back while the sharp white teeth bite into the quivering flesh.

John, like the caged wild beast, knew something of freedom because, for more than three years of the war he had served as chaplain to the forces, living a man’s life among men, sharing their privations, facing with them a common danger, daily and hourly risking death or, worse still, mutilation, seeing terrible sights, hearing all around him the cries and groans of the wounded, comforting the dying, burying the dead, yet, despite all this (or perhaps because of all this) realising something of the unfettered existence of primeval man dwelling in his cave in the thicket, hunter and hunted, a savage beast among all the other savage beasts but their acknowledged lord and master by virtue of his manhood. Primeval man, it is true, knew nothing of the irksomeness of red tape and King’s Regula¬ tions, but even these drawbacks could not stop John from sharing to a certain degree his sense of liberty.

But that time was over and done with and John was back in the stifling over-crowded parish in the east end of London in which, before the war, he had been a curate and to which he had returned in a similar capacity. Once more he walked close beside sin and suffering and that desperate need of the very essentials of life which makes men forget their birthright, and the sin and suffering were not purified by their surroundings, as John had felt them to be during the war, but stalked naked and unashamed through the courts and alleys of the city marking down their victims.

Small wonder if, at times, his soul sickened within him as the realisation of his impotency to cope with the burden of the people committed to his charge grew more and more insistent, although he knew the fault did not lie with him but with the conditions of life over which he had no control.

At such times he felt inclined, like Elijah, to say Tt is enough. Oh Lord, now take away my life, this life spent amid squalor and dirt and pitiful ignorance of all that makes life sweet and clean and wholesome and put me to work in a part of Thy vineyard where I can wrap myself up in the peace of the country and forget that such things exist.’

He acknowledged the unworthiness of such an attitude, and usually he managed to battle successfully against these wild longings and regrets, but this afternoon they would not be denied and at length, unable to focus his attention on his work, he sprang up and, like the caged wild beast, began to pace restlessly up and down the tiny room. The large square table, which occupied most of the floor space, left but little scope between it and the fireplace for any energetic movements and, with a sudden impatient shove, John sent it crashing against the chairs which stood in a prim row behind the door in order to give a wider area for his peregrinations, and was about to resume his exorcising walk when his eye was attracted by a small bunch of flowers lying on the carpet which was certainly not part of its floral design of pink roses tied with bows of yellow ribbon. He stooped and, picking it up, saw that it was composed of about half a dozen extremely faded bluebells kept together by a remnant of black bootlace wound tightly round their inadequate stalks. Where it came from or how long it had lain there John had no idea, but there it indisputably was, bearing, in spite of its jaded appearance, a message from the country to its fellow exile, and when he held it to his nostrils, there was still a trace of its delicate scent clinging to it.

He stood where he happened to be, drawing in the faint perfume, and at that precise instant a barrel organ in the street outside his window began playing a catchy tune from some musical comedy, at the sound of which two small girls on the opposite pavement commenced to dance with a kind of serious abandon, holding out their scanty skirts at each side, between thumb and forefinger, with intuitive grace, advancing, retiring, bending their supple young bodies backwards and forwards, swaying from side to side in rhythm to the gurgling accompaniment, too intent on the intricacies of their steps even to smile, though their faces were full of solemn satisfaction as they performed their evolutions with the absorbed demeanor of those who per¬ petuate some religious rite. An older girl, standing in an open doorway watching them, took up the refrain of the song which the organ was grinding out and her voice reached the watcher in the shadow of the room through the open window.

“ Look for the silver lining Whene’er a cloud appears in the blue.

Remember somewhere the sun is shining And so the right thing to do Is make it shine for you.

A heart full of joy and gladness Will always banish sadness and strife;

So always look for the silver lining And try to find the sunny side of life,”

she sang, and though her voice had a strident note in it and she pronounced her words with an unmistakable Cock¬ ney accent, it seemed to John almost like an injunction to throw off his black mood of despondency and, as the song counselled, “ try to find the sunny side of life.” That it existed even among these unpromising surroundings was evident. In the brief space of a single minute he had twice had ocular demonstration of the fact. David playing the harp to Saul had not achieved more than this east-end girl with her cracked voice and Cockney accent. The dove, re¬ turned to the ark with the olive leaf in its mouth, brought no surer token of hope than the faded bunch of bluebells picked up off the floor.

The wild longing died away in John’s breast as suddenly as it had been born and he pulled the table back to its original position in the middle of the floor, straightened the chairs against the wall, rearranged the hearth rug which had got kicked into a heap, and generally ridded up the room, feeling, as he did so, that the action was the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace which had been vouchsafed. Then he went to the door and, put¬ ting his head out, shouted.

In Eddis Street, in No. 14 of which John lived and moved and had his circumscribed being, bells are an unknown luxury. If anything is wanted the person who wants it either fetches it for himself or else shouts till someone comes who will fetch it for him.

John accordingly shouted.

“ Mrs. Ottoway.”

There being no response to his summons he went out into the passage and shouted once more and, still failing to elicit any reply, ran upstairs two steps at a time and presently reappeared with a bottle of water and a tooth-glass which he took into the sitting room and, pouring some of the water into the glass, proceeded to arrange the bluebells in it. This done, he cleared a space on the mantelpiece by the simple expedient of sweeping a pile of papers at one end of it on to the floor which he had lately been at such pains to tidy, and placed the makeshift flower vase on the spot where they had been. Then he returned to his seat at the writing table and resumed his interrupted work which con¬ sisted of the preparation of his sermon for Sunday. He had just got into the swing of it again when a knock sounded on the door — a mere concession to etiquette apparently — for it opened simultaneously, before he had even time to say “ Come in,” and his landlady appeared on the threshold.

She was so large and stout and comfortable looking with such a jolly good-natured face that she at once gave an air of homeliness to the room which it ordinarily rather lacked. She was obviously a person who could be relied upon to deal with any situation which might arise, however unexpected, and, what is more, deal with it in a calm unim¬ passioned manner which would wear down opposition to her methods of settling things by sheer imperturbation.

She took everything in her stride, as it were, never got flurried or excited, never lost her head under any circum¬ stances, and was equally capable of combatting a drunken man or the tax collector if either was so misguided as to show signs of fight.

From the first moment in which John set foot in her house she had taken him under her ample wing and moth¬ ered and cossetted him, although she didn’t, as she quite frankly told him, when he came to see the rooms, “ hold with parsons,” and was accustomed quite openly and with¬ out restraint to talk in his presence of the “ monkey-’ouse,” which was her designation of the clergy house in the neigh¬ bouring parish. It was impossible to take offence at her remarks for she made them in such a light-hearted indulgent way that all the sting was taken out of them, and even the inmates of the “ monkey-house ” who occasionally dropped in to smoke a pipe and have a chat with John, chaffed her on the subject, demanding nuts and recommending her to buy a tin of Keating’s for use after their visits, all of which she took in good part, never losing her temper and always ready with a suitable rejoinder.

John, in spite of his thirty-four years, she persisted in regarding as a mere boy, and indeed there was still a good deal of the boy in him which even the war had not suc¬ ceeded in destroying. There was something fresh and sparkling about him which instantly touched some hidden chord in those with whom he came in contact so that they themselves felt rejuvenated.

As Mrs. Ottoway, in one of her more expansive moments, remarked to her husband when discussing their lodger, “1 don’t know ’ow it is but ’e reminds me of Margate,” and when pressed for an explanation could only add, “ It was a sunny day, and the little waves were all shining and bright.”

The explanation certainly did sound silly as Mr. Otto¬ way was not slow to point out, but all the same it had an element of truth in it. There was some kinship between John and the sea on a sunny day. Perhaps the ocean which had been his wet-nurse and rocked him so often on her breast had nurtured in him some of her own nature so that he could but disclose it in his.

John swung round on his chair as Mrs. Ottoway came in.

“ Did you call?” she enquired, a trifle breathlessly, for she had been up in her bedroom at the top of the house chang¬ ing her dress and had hurried over the process at the sound of his summons and, incidentally, descended three flights of stairs at a far greater speed than was her wont in order to answer it.

“ It was only for some water,” answered John. “ It doesn’t matter now, thanks. I got it out of my bedroom.”

“ Not out of the jug, I do ’ope,” ejaculated Mrs. Ottoway.

“ Why shouldn’t I get it out of the jug?” asked John, a trifle mystified by his landlady’s vehemence which seemed quite uncalled for.

“ Microbes, that’s why,” retorted Mrs. Ottoway in a determined manner.

“ Oh, it wasn’t to drink!” John hastily assured her. “ It was for those flowers on the mantelpiece.”

He pointed in their direction, thus drawing Mrs. Ottoway’s attention to them. Mrs. Ottoway didn’t, strictly speaking, approve of flowers out of their proper place which, in her opinion, was the garden or, at a pinch, a window box, but since it was John’s pleasure to have them “ littering ” his room she forbore to comment on their presence. The tooth-glass however was not a thing to be passed over in silence.

“ Now, Mr. Ffoulkes, you know better than that, bringing the toilet-ware down into the sitting room,” she said, in the admonishing tones generally reserved for children or invalids, kindly but firmly. “ You’d only to call me and I’d ’ave brought you a vawse.”

“ I did call,” John reminded her, feeling rather like an argumentative little boy questioning his nurse’s dictum.

“ But you didn’t give me time to answer,” Mrs. Ottoway pointed out patiently, as one reasoning with a person of slightly inferior mental calibre who must be treated with every consideration.

“To talk of time when it’s a question of a woman dress¬ ing herself!” said John scornfully.

“ ’Ow d’ you know I was dressing meself?” demanded Mrs. Ottoway.

“ Because you’re all unbuttoned,” replied John in trium¬ phant tones.

“ Well then you didn’t ought to look,” replied Mrs. Ottoway, not in the least abashed, leisurely repairing the omission.

“I say, where did those bluebells come from?” asked John, reverting to the previous subject.

“ One of them Fresh Air Funders, I expect. They always come back laden with rubbidge.”

“ But they couldn’t have walked in by themselves. Some¬ body must have brought them,” John said. “ I found them on the floor.”

Mrs. Ottoway’s eyes and mouth suddenly disappeared inside her cheeks, which was the phenomenon that always took place when she laughed, and was accompanied by a strange gurgling sound which, as far as could be judged by external evidence, originated in that part of her anatomy called, by courtesy, her waist and, working its way slowly upwards, at last found an outlet through her compressed lips.

“ Ah, maybe they did walk in by theirselves,” she said, with ponderous humour, and was so obviously delighted with her own witticism that John, although he saw nothing excruciatingly funny in the remark, laughed in sympathy.

“ I expect ’Melia took ’em in and put ’em on the table and then swep’ ’em off again,” observed Mrs. Ottoway, when she had sufficiently recovered from the paroxysm of mirth into which her late extremely feeble joke had thrown her.

’Melia was the “ help ” who came in each morning to assist Mrs. Ottoway in her household duties. She was a lanky raw-boned girl of fifteen who apparently suffered from chronic catarrh in the head and relied on sniffing often and loudly in preference to using a handkerchief. She spoke in a husky whisper, and was so distressingly humble that once, when John inadvertently trod heavily on her foot, she hoarsely murmured “ Thank yer, Sir ” below her breath as though he had conferred an immense favour upon her.

John accepted the explanation without comment. It seemed so consistent with what he knew of ’Melia’s character that she should put a thing on the table and then sweep it off again. ’Melia, to judge from the scraps of conversation he overheard in the mornings between her and Mrs. Ottoway, spent most of her existence in carefully undoing what she had just done. If she brushed the stairs she invariably went outside the front door to shake the mat directly she had finished them and on her reentry tramped up them with her muddy or dusty boots so that the work had all to be done again. Did she wash out a tablecloth one day, it was the sure signal for her to upset the mustard or coffee or milk over it when she cleared away the breakfast things next morning. She systematically browned black boots and blacked brown. She poured boil¬ ing water into teapots innocent of tea or, if she put the tea in, forgot to add the water. She filled saltcellars with castor sugar and, as a setoff to that, stirred salt into the milk puddings. And all the time she sniffed with madden¬ ing persistency. A sniff heralded her arrival in the morning and a sniff punctuated each retreating footfall as she wended her way homewards at one o’clock.

The house seemed almost uncannily silent the first ten minutes after she had gone. It was like sitting in a room with a grandfather clock that has suddenly stopped ticking.

“ Why does Amelia sniff like she does?” inquired John with pardonable curiosity, the mention of her name recalling this unpleasant failing of hers to his mind.

“ She’s got a growth at the back of her nose, pore lamb,” said Mrs. Ottoway sympathetically.

In his wildest flights of imagination John had never pic¬ tured ’Melia as even remotely resembling a lamb, and that she should be thus designated because of a growth at the back of her nose was altogether too much for him. He simply lay back in his chair and howled with laughter, and Mrs. Ottoway, although, in this case, she could see nothing funny in her remark, started to gurgle again from pure enjoyment at seeing him amused.

“ By Jove! ” John gasped breathlessly when he had recovered himself, “ I’m blest if I ever thought I’d find the silver lining in Amelia.”

Mrs. Ottoway stopped gurgling and looked at him reproachingly.

“ Some may call it that, Sir,” she said, “ but her mother calls it adenoids, and any’ow, give it what name you will, it’s her misfortune not her fault and as such to be pitied not made a mockery of.”

John got up from his chair and going over to Mrs. Otto¬ way laid both his hands on her shoulders.

“ You old silly,” he said, gently shaking her, “ I wasn’t laughing at Amelia’s adenoids, I was laughing at my own thoughts. Don’t you know me better than that?”

“ Well, Sir, it did seem like a revulsion of nature to ’ear you acting so foreign to yourself. But there, as you say, I oughter ’a’ known better,” said the good woman, instantly mollified. “ There’s many an act of kindness I’ve seen you do when you didn’t know I was watching. The people ’ud miss you sorely if you was to go, that they would.”

“ Would they? Would they really miss me?” John asked, with a sudden sense of his unworthiness discomfitingly mingled with a recollection of his late rebellious mood.

“ Why, o’ course they would,” declared Mrs. Ottoway soothingly. “ I’m sure it’s wonderful the way they looks up to you.”

There was no sarcasm intended in her mode of expression and John took it in the spirit in which it was meant.

“ I’ve lately felt as if I were just a beastly failure. I get so sick of it all.” The confession seemed wrung out of John against his will.

“ It’s the spring, dearie,” said Mrs. Ottoway putting a toil-worn hand up to his arm and giving it an encouraging pat. “ All young things get restless in the spring. You want to get into the country and ’ave a good caper round like the little lambs do.”

A vision of himself capering like a little lamb in a coun¬ try meadow rose before John’s eyes but he managed with an effort to keep back the laughter which rose to his lips. Not for worlds would he have wounded the feelings of this simple old woman who loved him. She would have been horrified if she had realised that she had called him “ dearie.” The word had slipped out quite unconsciously but it had not escaped John’s notice and it gave him a comfortable glowing sensation in the region of his heart.

“ Does Amelia caper?” he asked gravely.

“ Now ’ave done with your nonsense, Mr. Ffoulkes,” Mrs. Ottoway said with simulated severity. “ ’Melia caper, indeed! She’d better let me catch her, that’s all!”

“Well, you know, you did say she was a pore lamb,” John said.

Chapter II

Thursday was John’s weekly holiday and he generally on that day “ went west ” as Mrs. Ottoway, with a blissful disregard of wartime phraseology, expressed it.

The very next Thursday therefore saw him starting off from Eddis Street directly after breakfast with the pleasant prospect ahead of him of twelve hours of uninterrupted freedom.

His landlady chanced to be in the passage when he came out of his sitting room ready to be off, and followed him to the door and on to the step.

“Well now, I ’ope you’ll enjoy yourself, and take care of them nasty old busses in Piccadilly,” she said as he departed.

Her injunction referred to an unfortunate incident which had happened the previous winter when John, alighting from a bus at the corner of Bond Street, had slipped on the greasy roadway and measured his length in the mud to his own great embarrassment and the delight of his beholders, the result being that he spent the next three or four hours in the Turkish bath in Jermyn Street while his trousers and overcoat were being, as far as was possible, restored to a condition in which he could appear in them in public.

Since that humiliating episode Mrs. Ottoway seemed to have become imbued with the idea that an omnibus in Pic¬ cadilly was, like a man in drink, a thing to be avoided if practicable but, if not, to be approached with due caution and watchful care in case it suddenly rounded on you and felled you to earth before you had time to defend yourself.

She stood and watched him, swinging down the street, with the proud air of a mother who watches her first-born son going up to the platform at prize-giving to receive a book he doesn’t want from the hands of a local magnate who doesn’t really care whether he has it or not.

It was only when John turned the corner and was lost to view that Mrs. Ottoway went back into the house, shut¬ ting the door carefully behind her.

“ The ’ouse don’t seem the same with Mr. Ffoulkes out of it,” she confided to ’Melia presently, voicing her senti¬ ments to that unworthy recipient of them simply for want of anybody better.

“ No’m,” replied ’Melia dutifully.

Meanwhile John, on the top of a tram on his way to Aldersgate Street station, was busy mapping out his pro¬ gramme for the day.

First he would do some shopping, then, when he had finished that, he would go to his club and lunch and after lunch he would put in an hour or so looking through the illustrated papers. This, he calculated, would bring him to three o’clock at which time he would start off to pay a call on his godmother who lived in Kensington. If she were at home he would have tea at her fiat and, on leaving there, would proceed to a quiet little restaurant he knew of, have dinner, and wind up with a visit to the pit of some theatre.

Accordingly, having successfully carried through the first three items on his programme, the scheduled hour found him making his exit through the portals of his club to fulfill the next.

The call on his godmother was more a duty than a pleasure, if the truth be told. She was a school friend of his mother’s whom he had not seen since he was a small boy, when she had come to stay at his home, and his chief recollection of her visit was the mean advantage she took of her sponsorship to forbid him to do all the things he most enjoyed and which ordinarily he was allowed to do. He mustn’t run about by himself on the edge of the cliff like he did. It made her feel giddy. He must hold her hand all the time, like a good little boy. He mustn’t bathe with nothing on. It wasn’t nice. Nor must he bathe with the village boys. He was a little gentleman, and if he

IS demeaned himself in that way they might forget and treat him as if he were just one of themselves. He mustn’t go out in the sun without a hat. It might make him very ill and, equally, he must not go out in the rain without a coat nor in the wind without a muffler. He mustn’t paddle until an hour had elapsed after a meal. It would probably give him a dreadful dreadful pain in his stomach. John could still remember how she dropped her voice on the last word and spoke it with bated breath as if it were a gross impropriety for the human frame to have such a thing included in its composition. He supposed she had only been with them a week but on looking back it seemed an eternity and when she had gone he had, as a protest, escaped out of the house without a stitch on him and, in the pouring rain, had run down to the beach directly he left the table on the completion of a designedly heavy dinner, only pausing to shed his garments in the hall on his way through.

In those far-off days the road, which now ran between the little stone house and the shore, was nonexistent. There was only a sloping green meadow dividing the garden from the sands. A vehicle of any sort wishing to get from one side of the bay to the other had either to cross the beach or, if the tide was high, to go round by an inland road, which meant an extra two or three miles added to the journey. This was fortunate for John on this particular occasion, for he ran no risk of encountering any stranger on his headlong flight seawards and therefore nobody’s sus¬ ceptibilities were hurt by the unexpected vision of a small boy tearing across a field in puris naturalibus pursued by three females — his aunt, the cook, and the nondescript individual, commonly known as “ the girl,” who filled in the domestic gaps. Even his mother, who never under any circumstances exerted herself unduly, joined in the chase as far as the front door at which point she abandoned it in favour of an armchair by the fire. The cook, he distinctly recollected, got no further than the garden gate where she stopped in order to recover her lost breath, she being of full habit. Half way across the field the “ girl’s ” feet slipped from under her on the greasy slope and, with a despairing shriek, she sat down heavily upon a wet tussock studded with thistles in eight holes. His aunt, who invari¬ ably accomplished what she set out to do, was the only one who never faltered in her stride and, before he could take to the water, she was upon him and the next minute, despite his kicks and struggles, he was being borne bedwards decently draped in her shawl.