The Prisoners of Hartling/Chapter 2

RTHUR WOODROFFE'S true defence of his action in leaving Peckham did not occur to him until after he had parted with Somers.

In the course of the ten days that had passed since his sudden arrival at a decision, he had fallen into a perfect intoxication of spending. In that time he had spent over two hundred pounds.

And with that expenditure he had broken another habit of thought. His early life had always been overshadowed by the cares and threats of respectable poverty, and when his last financial responsibility had been closed by his mother's death, eighteen months earlier, he had continued to save money, with the prudent thought that he might presently need capital.

But just as he had suddenly and surprisingly realised that there was no compelling reason why he should stay on as Somers' assistant at Peckham, so, also, he had realised when he began his shopping, that he might, if he wished, do the thing in style. He was beginning a new life. He was young and competent, and he had a profession. He would let the future take care of itself.

And here was one of his fantasies coming true; he would have everything new and clean. He remembered his dream of stripping naked and plunging into a deep wide river, a sweet and rapid flood of purifying water; of swimming many miles until he came to a new land where vermin were unknown; and of walking out of the river, cool, and refreshed, to dress—he had never told any one that—in white silk from head to foot. Nothing but the smoothest silk would do. He had seen that silk in imagination glimmering with the sheen of a fine pearl. He smiled now at the extravagance of that fancy, but the temptation to buy an entirely new outfit was too strong to be resisted. He had deserved it. The impulse marked his real recovery from the effects of the war.

The world owed him five years of youth! That was the true defence of his action in leaving Peckham. He saw his justification with astounding clearness as he stod [sic] on Westminster Bridge looking up the river, half an hour before his train was timed to leave Charing Cross—the train that was to take him to Hartling for his promised week-end. In a re-action against his orgie of spending, he had come as far as that by tram, lugging his new kit-bag and dressing-case. The tram would have taken him on to Charing Cross, but when it had stopped close to his old hospital, he had felt an urgent desire to see the river from the old standpoint. The thought of his bags had not deterred him. He was bursting with vigour and energy that morning.

Society, the World, Life owed him five years for those he had given. The years from twenty-two to twenty-seven. He had joined up in August, 19 14, had been sent down to Salisbury Plain for his training, and had been in France by the summer of next year. He had been lucky in some ways. He had not been wounded or gassed or suffered from shell-shock, and in the following winter he had been combed out and sent back to the hospital for two years to finish his training, before returning to France as a Lieutenant in the R.A.M.C. But looking back now, it seemed to him that he had had no relaxation in all that time. He had taken the war too seriously and the shadow of it had lain over him. If it had not been for that, he would not have joined dear old Bob Somers on the very day that he had been demobilised. He had got the habit of being strenuous and self-sacrificing and all the rest of it, and the habit, or whatever it was, had apparently dropped from him almost miraculously in the course of that conversation. It was unquestionably gone. He felt himself, unexpectedly and delightfully, not only free but also young again. He must write to Bob and explain that theory of the lost years of youth and the world's debit account. He would not be hard on his debtor. He would not exact a full repayment of the original loan. He would take only two years. After that he would go back to the strenuous habit of self-sacrifice and leave his youth behind.

He could recover the very spirit of it in this place. How often he had glanced down from the end of a ward and taken back to his work a picture of the river, of the bridge, or of the Gothic dignities of the Houses of Parliament. In retrospect those pictures were all coloured with the vivid emotions of youth. He could place some of them with the distinctness of a clearly remembered dream. There was, for instance, that wonderful morning in February, mild and clear as a day in April, associated with the thought that he was playing for his hospital in one of the "Rugger" cup ties that afternoon. Great days, those were; and in effect, he was physically little older now than he was then. He was splendidly fit.

He laid hold again of his two bags, and strode triumphantly across the bridge.

And that mood held, even mounted, unchecked by the deliberations of the South-Eastern and Chatham train service. Indeed, the semi-torpid movements of the railway servants on the branch line to which he changed at the junction afforded a pleasant contrast to his own exuberance. He was beginning life again. Everything was coming right. He had visions of some delightful, improbable enlargement of his condition. Old Kenyon might take a fancy to him. Some one in the house, some special favourite of the old man's, might be taken seriously ill, and Arthur Woodroffe, the brilliant young general practitioner from Peckham, would work a miracle at the eleventh hour. Old Mr Kenyon's gratitude would take a practical form, and the thing was done. There were other variants of the dream, but this seemed to be the most promising.

A car was waiting for him at Hartling Station, but neither his aunt nor any of his connections by marriage had come to meet him. Arthur had his bags put into the tonneau and sat in front. He wanted to talk to some one, and found the chauffeur quite willing for conversation. They began with the obvious subject of motors and presently the chauffeur volunteered the statement that the Vauxhall in which they were riding was not their best car.

"Use this for station work and short trips mostly, sir," he said. "But Mr Kenyon always has the Rolls-Royce for going up to town. Never goes any other way. Wonderful old gentleman, Mr Kenyon, sir."

"I haven't seen him for twenty years," Arthur said. "He's getting on for ninety, isn't he?"

"Ninety-one last October, sir," the chauffeur told him, "and he'd make a good seventy in a manner of speaking. A bit absent-minded sometimes, he don't always hear you when you speak to him; but no doubt that's because he's thinking o' something else. He's not what you call deaf, not in the least."

"Good Lord. Wonderful!" Arthur commented. His mind was engaged in framing a tentative essay on the causes of disability in old age, more particularly with reference to arterio-sclerosis, but he reserved that as being a shade too technical. "Though there's no real reason, you know," he said, "why we shouldn't live to be a hundred or even a hundred and twenty. There's a fellow in Asia Minor who is supposed to be a hundred and fifty."

"I suppose not, sir," the chauffeur replied without enthusiasm, and added, apparently as an afterthought, "You're a doctor, I was told, sir."

Arthur nodded. "I haven't come down here professionally, though," he said.

"No, sir; I shouldn't say as Mr Kenyon had much faith in doctors …" The chauffeur's sentence tailed off on a high note, with an effect of there being more to come; also he reduced the pace of the car as if he had something of importance to add before they reached the house.

"I've wondered sometimes, sir," he continued, after a short pause, "whether he oughtn't to—to take advice, as they say. Them fits of absent-mindedness I was telling you about, for instance, come on very queer sometimes. It's like as if he was sound asleep with his eyes wide open. Scared me once or twice he has. I thought perhaps being a doctor you might be able to say if it was anything serious. Of course, being ninety-one …"

Arthur would have liked to give a ready diagnosis of this abnormal condition, but his expertise was not equal to the task, and he fell back on the usual defence of his profession.

"Couldn't possibly say without examining him," he said. "It might be due to one of several conditions."

The car running down a slight incline with a free engine had almost stopped. The chauffeur appeared to be deep in thought.

"At Mr Kenyon's age …" he began tentatively

"One would not expect him to be quite the man he was at twenty-eight," Arthur supplied.

"Exactly, sir, one wouldn't," the chauffeur replied in the tone of one aroused to a consciousness of his immediate duties; and he let in the clutch and speeded up the car with an effect of turning his attention to more pressing affairs.

For the last quarter of a mile they had been running alongside a high brick wall, and as they now swerved in between a pair of wide-open iron gates, Arthur realised that the rather ugly wall was the boundary of Mr Kenyon's property.

The contrast between the outside and the inside was, as perhaps it was designed to be, sudden and startling. From the dusty side road flanked on one side by that erection of crude brickwork, he was transported without any kind of preparation into a finished and extensively cultivated garden of unusual extent and beauty. Seen from that entrance by the little lodge, the garden wonderfully displayed itself. It lay on a moderate slope, lifting up in a steady rise from the entrance gates to the climax of the house, that spread itself along the crest of the hill with an effect of dignified watchfulness. And the designer of that garden had had fine natural material to work upon other than the slope that provided the excuse for that triple tier of terraces with their shallow stone steps and low balustrading. He had had, for example, a fine selection of forest trees, elm, oak, and beech, with as a contrast a plantation of larches and silver birch bounding the estate on the east side. Also he had had an abundance of running water. A little river, its point of entrance hidden by the close shrubberies and plantations that shut out all sight of the ugly boundary wall on the garden side, cascaded not too artificially, out of obscurity into the sunlight, ran as a decently restrained little river for a hundred yards or so between close-cut lawns, the upper one of which was bordered by a row of graceful wych elms; and then spread itself into an irregular lake, over which the main drive to the house was carried by the spring of a slender bridge. But any catalogue of that garden's innumerable "features" must inevitably convey a false impression. Whoever had planned it, had had the genius to conceive his effect as a whole. It was arranged, composed, to display itself from the entrance lodge as a broad mass that was presented to the mind as a miniature park, abounding with natural opportunities, which had for many years been scrupulously kept, planted, and mown. And seen thus on the broad, it could not be classified as belonging either to the formal or the landscape type; rather it had the air of a diligently cultivated suburban garden enormously enlarged. There was something new, bright, almost deliberately factitious in its pretensions.

The chauffeur had but one comment to offer as they spun up the long curve of the gravel drive to the house. As they crossed the stone bridge over the pond, he pointed to the right, indicating a rough-cast and half-timbered building nearly hidden by the trees of the larch plantation into which the little river plunged out of sight.

"Power house, sir," he explained. "We do all our own lighting and pumping by water-power. Pleased to show you over, sir, if you have time. Nice little plant we've got."

Arthur found a sense of satisfaction in the thought of the completeness of the place.