CHAPTER IV

There were now rapid phases to John's character. He was beginning to apprehend all the wonderful interests of the world, interests from which he was being boxed up. He longed for the sound of a woman's voice and a glimpse of beauty; a violent nostalgia seized him. The mention of Asia Minor in the geography lesson--and he was leagues away swinging his bare legs on a verandah shaded with almond blossom, hearing the singing of the stream down the gorge at Amasia, watching the light silver, the waterfall as the moon came over the mountain cliff and flooded the valley. He recalled his father reading to him; he could hear the clatter of his pony's hoofs in the courtyard, hear Ali calling him out to play, Ali his bosom friend, whose last gift now lay on his chest, whence he had never removed it. Or he would be suddenly transported to Sedley by the sight of a familiar dictionary, and again sit working and chattering with Vernley and Marsh in their study. His longing for his friends increased with the passing days. Vernley wrote faithfully, chronicling doings at Cambridge, sometimes unconsciously causing pain by the enthusiastic mention of a new name, which John felt was taking the place of his own.

As anticipated, Marsh was a great success. In the freer atmosphere of the university he had blossomed into a man of power and influence. He had already made a brilliant debut at the Union, and prophets talked of him as a future President--"Marsh says the office would be yours for the asking, there is no one here who could stand up with you--and I agree; why on earth don't you come, you dear old obstinate Scissors!" John was almost persuaded, but pride held him back. He must work out his own salvation--a memory of Browning helped him:

"_But after they will know me. If I stoop Into a dark tremendous sea of doubt, It is but for a time; I press God's lamp Close to my heart; its splendour, soon or late, Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day._"

Was he a coward? He had a fear of poverty, and an almost desperate fear of the future at times. He was immersed in the poetry of Shelley and Keats, and soon was longing ardently to die of consumption in Italy, long before he would be twenty-six. In another mood his ambition carried him to dizzy heights. Recollections of talks with Mr. Ribble came back. Downing Street was not such an impossibility after all. He could speak. What had Vernley said in his last letter? And Mr. Steer had written to him about his article on "The Rise of Naturalism in English Poetry" which had appeared in the _Blue Review_, and asked him to be sure to call when next in London, in order that he might meet "some of your contemporaries"! From that day on London began to call him. That was the battlefield. Woodman agreed. "This is a dead end," he said, "but useful for the future."

"Useful, how?" asked John.

"You're getting material to write about. Think what a story's here for you one day, when you look back. You'll smile then."

Gradually John's mood of desperation passed. The problems of life was yet to be solved or attempted, but he was young. He had intense ambition, good health, friends, and certain qualities which secured him notice. He became aware that he possessed what men call a personality; there was something that made persons ready to do him a service, and this asset was the latest of his discoveries. At the Vicarage, Miss Piggin had proved her friendship. She left him books; she knew something about art, having spent two terms at Newlyn; at least she knew the various schools of art, the names of the galleries in London, and the queer methods employed for achieving success.

For the first time he heard of the Vorticiste and the mad young men of the Backyard Gallery, which specialised in chimneyscapes and exalted the hideous. She told him of energetic young James Squilson, one part artist, and two parts publicist, the one part being good, the others impudent. The good was at present carefully hidden, while his monstrosities had created sufficient of an outcry to make those beardless Jews, Messrs. Riverton, give him a one-man show at the Trafford Galleries. This exhibition, Miss Piggin said, was a great success. Society flocked to it and declared it unique. It bought enigmatical canvases at fifty guineas each, which were cheap, considering they were fashionable and provocative of discussions at dinner parties. Major Slade, a charming man, who liked having artists to dinner, bought several and felt like a connoisseur for six months, which was as long as he liked any sensation. Squilson's third exhibition cooled Slade's waning enthusiasm. The perverse fellow had become an artist. His paintings might have been accepted by the Royal Academy. When Squilson declared, to the horror of society, that he would not object to being accepted, Slade dropped him and gave away his works as wedding presents.

Miss Piggin was musical also; she played Bach and cultivated an enthusiasm for Scriabine. John found that his musical intelligence ceased after Debussy--Ravel was his breaking point, although Stravinsky's _L'oiseau de Feu_ seemed to give him a prospect of a new land where the animals were articulate.

John became rather a frequent visitor to the Vicarage. Mr. Woodman was asked to dinner also, but he was asked as a companion, and was useful in occupying Piggin's attention. Miss Piggin, accustomed to the role of hostess since her mother's death, devoted her attention to John. Formerly on festive occasions she had asked her friend, the the doctor's daughter, to assist her. She decided that she could manage well enough with such obliging young men. Miss Piggin also found a new incentive to dress rather better than usual. The sleepy life of a country Vicarage had caused her to become somewhat lax in the past; it was no use being a fashion plate when there was no one to notice. Now, however, she made a surprising resurrection; even the village publican commented on it, as also poor little Miss Timis, called in to do the sewing.

Although Miss Piggin was well aware that nature had not been lavish at her birth, she knew that fashion has given woman a good frame for an indifferent picture. Short sighted, out of doors she wore spectacles, but these were discarded in the evening. She was troubled with chilblains on her hands, it is true, but she had a wonderfully fresh complexion for a young woman of nearly thirty. John in fact thought she was about twenty-three, though she seemed to have seen a lot in her short life. But she could talk and had an eager interest in literature, of which she was no mean critic. As an artist she was sufficiently good to merit her asking John to sit to her, which he did, getting an ache in the neck, while she made a very idealised drawing of him. It was a little trying, for the sitting which he had been told would require a few hours, ran into weeks. Miss Piggin seemed everlastingly taking out the next day what she had achieved with such elation the previous day. The eyes and the mouth caused the most trouble. These required several visits from the easel for close study. His hair was comparatively easy, for she could arrange it to fall as it suited her. She told John he had sensitive nostrils and a perfect, but sensuous mouth.

"Not sensual?" he said laughing.

"It might become that--yet," she replied.

It was good fun and he liked the little teas they made in the studio, with the aid of a gas ring. Afterwards he insisted on washing up while she dried the tea things. It was a domestic moment and it gave Miss Piggin a thrill; he looked so fascinating with his sleeves rolled up above the elbows. Once, when he dozed while sitting, she had hoped that he would fall fast asleep. She would just kiss his head as it lay, with its tumbled hair, on the side of the chair. But he aroused himself, and Miss Piggin was grateful that she was saved from being so foolish.

She held John from a nervous breakdown. She took him for lone walks and encouraged him to talk. He found his idea of going to London to write, eagerly supported. What to write he hardly knew. Miss Piggin suggested journalism. She had met quite a lot of journalists near her rooms at Hampstead. They seemed very jolly and not hard-worked. It was true they had small private incomes or self-sacrificing parents. She gave John the address of a boarding house in Pimlico. If he went to London, he would find it cheap but not nasty.

It was on one of these walks one day an incident occurred that thrilled her with a revelation of the male in action. They were on a narrow and muddy road when a cart came into view, with a red-faced youth lolling on the top of a load. Although there was no space for the two walkers to stand in, he drove his cart forward, jamming them up against the wall and spattering them with mud. Miss Piggin gave a cry of despair at the sight of her muddy skirt. With a quick movement John ran to the horse's head, seized the rein and pulled up the cart.

"Why don't you look where you are going?" he shouted angrily.

The lout blinked at him.

"Shut yer ---- mouth."

John flushed and tightened his grip.

"You'll get down and apologise to the lady," he said firmly. Another flow of indecent language.

"Let go that ---- rein!" finished the carter.

"I shall not. Come down!" retorted John.

The carter raised his whip and brought the lash down across John's shoulders and neck. The horse reared, John started forward, seized the dangling leg of his aggressor, and brought him sprawling down into the muddy road. He was up in a minute bellowing obscenely with rage. John dodged the blow directed at his mouth.

"I'll fight yer! I'll fight yer, yer--" yelled the carter stamping around. John slipped off his coat and waistcoat; the carter followed suit.

"Oh, Mr. Dean, please, please!" implored Miss Piggin from the mound on which she had taken refuge. John's answer was to fling his discarded clothes into her arms. She looked around, meaning to shriek, but as no one was in sight it seemed useless. Meanwhile the battle had begun. The antagonists were as different in appearance as they were in method. The carter was a heavily built youth of about twenty. He was sandy-haired with a tanned face and neck. His arms were muscular, and the gaping shirt revealed a hairy chest. He was a fellow not likely to be knocked out, especially by the lightly built, slim youth, who looked almost delicate in contrast.

Could this determined, lithe fighter make any impression on an opponent so firmly built and muscular? Miss Piggin thought not, and began to think of intervention with her umbrella; but she might poke the wrong person. She was cheered to notice how quick her champion was. It was a contest between speed with intelligence and strength with obstinacy. Mr. Dean might set the pace, but would he wear down this bulwark of seasoned flesh? They had both received blows, and the nose of the slim youth was bleeding. The other, however, was also bleeding at the mouth. Miss Piggin felt faint and yet thrilled at the sight of these flushed youths, their hair falling into their eyes, one breathing hard, and the other looking implacably fierce. It reminded her of a fight she had witnessed between two stags on Exmoor. There was something exhilarating in the spectacle, though horrible.

Considerable in-fighting followed which evidently distressed the carter. Although Miss Piggin could not determine who was getting the blows--they were bent down together--the carter was letting forth "oughs" and "ahs" either as expressions of satisfaction or of receipt. The carter had opened with a wild but weighty swinging of the arms, which the other cautiously avoided. One blow from those sculpturesque forearms would have rendered him hors-de-combat. He waited his opportunity, backing slowly until he secured a favourable opening. One fist landed over the carter's eye. He grunted but his progress was not impeded. The next moment they had clinched, for which Miss Piggin felt grateful. She would have left them in this harmless position, if she could, until she had returned with the village constable. She now stood with bated breath, for when they broke away some one would receive a blow.

Here John's small supply of ringcraft, gathered in Sedley gymnasium, came into play. He used the clinch to rest himself upon the bulk of the carter, who pushed him around, tiring himself. Then seizing a propitious moment, he threw off his assailant's arms, feinted to the left cheek, and swung in with a sharp upper cut with the right. It caught the carter neatly under the chin, lifted him and sent his head back. He went down heavily with a lost balance. John walked round till his opponent was ready to rise. His blood was up, there was a grim expression on his face, and Miss Piggin, catching a glimpse of his steely eyes, cold and fierce under the mop of disordered hair, changed in her alarm. She feared now for the life of the carter, raised up on his elbow and contemplating things.

"Oh, Mr. Dean!" she whimpered.

He continued to walk round as though he had not heard. The carter painfully rose to his feet, and then with a torrent of abuse, rushed in mad fury at the waiting foe. A right from the shoulder caught John on the chest, breaking his guard, and sent him down to his knees with its sheer strength. The carter had no code to obey and was ready to follow up his advantage, but in this he was unwary. John waited until he stood over him, and with a crouching spring came up under the raw fellow's guard, reaching his chin again with some force. Shaken and somewhat dismayed with this surprising return of an apparently beaten adversary, he began to retreat, and John, still full of battle, saw his chance. There was some swift in-fighting which Miss Piggin could not follow, because now the amount of blood visible on both antagonists made her feel ill. She turned her head away. When she looked again, it was all over, John stood surveying the huddled up form of the beaten youth.

"Can you get up?" he asked coolly. The voice was almost cruel in its tone, thought Miss Piggin. Then John stooped and pulled the sullen fellow to his feet. They stood facing one another for a long interval.

"Will you shake hands?" said John, extending his. There was no response for a moment.

"Yer...." snarled the carter, his eyes still full of battle.

"I'm sorry then," said John unrolling his sleeves. There must have been something crossing the slow brain of the carter. His eyes changed expression.

"Yer've won ... boss," he said slowly. John heard the changed tone and again held out his hand. The carter took it.

But peace had left them both strange spectacles. The horse even seemed a little afraid of its master, and turned its head as he approached. He was wiping his face, which had begun to swell, with a red handkerchief. John was doing likewise. The absurdity of the whole affair was intensified in the process. Miss Piggin now approached and offered a diminutive handkerchief, which John accepted, for his own was soaked by a persistent nose. The right eye was slowly closing up.

Without further comment the carter took his horse's head and led it off down the road. As John looked up and caught Miss Piggin's piteous expression, he could not help laughing.

"I suppose I look a beautiful object?"

"Oh, Mr. Dean!" was all she could say. If only he would faint now, all was safe! Her womanly instinct for nursing the brave rose within her. She would dearly have loved to hold him in her arms and bathe his face, and tidy his hair. But romance gave place to the practical.

"You must come to the Vicarage first--you can't return like that."

"No--I can't--but I want washing now before it dries," he replied. There was a canal bordering the next field; the road led over the canal bridge. The Vicarage was two miles away.

"I'm going to swim in the canal!" he said.

Miss Pilgrim shivered at the idea. "It's terribly cold!" she cried. "You will get a chill."

"It's the tonic I want," he replied. "You stand on the bridge. I can strip underneath if you'll keep watch."

He led the way, and left her on the bridge. What an amazing man! A minute or so later she heard a splash, and shivered sympathetically in the cold November wind. She could not help just looking over the bridge a moment, and caught a glimpse of white shoulders, a dark head, and the strong arms thrashing the grey water into a foamy track. Then he turned and she looked away.

When he came up and joined her on the bridge later, he looked marvellously refreshed. It was true his eye had closed up but most of the horror of the battle had been the blood.

"But how have you dried yourself?" she asked, as he squeezed his hair with his hands.

He laughed at her with his merry eye--the right one, still visible.

"On my shirt."

She blushed crimson. Men had shirts, as she knew, but it was awkward to be told so by men. They walked home through the barren copse, burning red on the horizon where the sun left the winter day. For one person these were the woods of Broceliande, and her heart warmed towards the young knight fresh from the battle.

Mr. Woodman's expression, at the appearance of John just in time for tea in the study, was a mixture of surprise and disapproval.

"My dear fellow--" he began. "You have not been fighting? An assistant master! Whatever will Tobin say? Don't eat all that toast--here's the fork, make your own--he will want a full explanation of that eye. What an eye!"

John briefly recounted the episode.

"I should leave out Miss Piggin," said Woodman.

"Why?"

"Tobin strongly disapproves of masters walking about the country with young ladies, and as for fighting for them like bulls in a herd..."

"Oh, stop ragging. What's the best for a black eye?"

BOOK IV

LIFE