CHAPTER V THE HERO

October dropped from red to brown in a sudden night of rain, and the Three Counties began to draw over themselves their fallow cloaks of sleep. In every view the ploughed fields spread brown and wet and empty, some with a ruddy touch of Kentish clay, others with a white gleam of Surrey chalk.

Nigel flung himself into the farmyard toil, and complained because it was too scanty. Their ten acres of grass and orchard, with three or four cows and some poultry, did not give nearly enough work, he thought, to two able-bodied men. He remembered the days when the acres of Sparrow Hall had rolled through marsh and coppice into Kent—when fifteen sweet-mouthed cows had gathered at the gates at milking-time, and golden rye from their high fields had gone in their waggon to Honey Mill. He was miserably aware that he had no one but himself to blame for this, though his brother and sister never reproached him. He had been impatient of the slow bounties of the fields, he had plunged into quick, adventurous dealings; for a few months he had brought wealth, hurry and excitement into his life—then had come poverty, and the ageless monotony of prison.

When he looked round on their reduced estate it was not so much humiliation that ate into his heart as a sense of treachery. He had betrayed[Pg 54] the country. Impatient of its slow, honest ways, he had sought others, crooked, swift, defiled. He had turned renegade to the quiet fields round his home, and entered a rival camp of reckless strivings and meanness. This had been his sin, and he was being punished for it still. The punishment of the State for his sin against the State was over ... but the punishment for his sin against his home, the country, and himself was still being meted out to him by all three.

The high spirits that had seized him on that first rainy morning of his freedom often came and snatched him up again, but they always dropped him back into a depression that was almost horror. He had moments of crazy gaiety and uproariousness, of sheer animal delight in his bodily freedom; but behind them all lurked the consciousness that he was still in prison. He had been sentenced for life. He was shut up in some dreary place, away from the farm, away from Len and Janey. He might work on the farm the whole day, and fool with his brother and sister the whole evening, but he knew none the less that he was shut up away from them all.

During this time he had peculiar dreams. He often fell asleep full of fury and despair, but his dreams were always of sunlit spaces, children and flowers. Again and again in them appeared the little girl Ivy—not dirty and cross, but lovely and fresh and winsome, smiling and beckoning. It seemed as if behind all the horrors and fogs of his life something divine and innocent was calling—at[Pg 55] times it was comfort and peace and healing to him, at others it was the chief of his torments.

The Furlongers had always lived aloofly at Sparrow Hall—scorned, even before their downfall, by their own class, they had nevertheless not sought comrades in the classes beneath them. They had always sufficed one another, and had not cared for the distractions of over-the-fence gossip or the public-house.

However, since his return from Parkhurst, Nigel had realised a certain tendency on the part of labourers and small farmers to seek him out and claim equal terms. This was not merely due to the consciousness of his degradation, the delight of patronising the proud Furlonger—its chief motive was a strange sort of deference. Socially, his crime had reduced him to their level, but morally it had given him an exaltation which had never been his before. He now belonged to that world of which they caught rare dazzling glimpses in their Sunday papers. He was only a rank below Crippen in their hero-worship, and when they met him in the village they stared at him in much the same way as they stared at the murderer's photograph in The People.

At first Nigel hung back from them, sick and confused with shame, but as the days went by, the emptiness of his life beat him into conciliation. Humiliated to the dust, he longed for some sort of regard, however spurious, just as a starving man will eat dung. His brother and sister gave him love and kindness in plenty, but they were[Pg 56] much too practical in their emotions any longer to give him deference. Before he went to prison he had been, though the youngest, the leader of the family—his stronger brain, his quicker wits had made him the captain of their exploits. But now his brain and wits were discredited. Len and Janey did not despise him, they were not ashamed of him before men—but he had forfeited his position in the household. They no longer looked upon him as their superior, he was just the younger brother. At first he had scarcely noticed this—everything had been strange, and he had let slip former realities. But as the days went by, and Parkhurst became more and more of a horrible and suggestive parenthesis, he was able to recall the old ways and see how things had changed. He made no complaint, but his spirit was chafed, and sought crazily for balms.

"Come, don't be stand-offish, Mus' Furlonger," said the shepherd of Little Cow Farm, who, meeting him outside the Bells at Lingfield, had suggested a drink.

"No, you're a better man than me now—aren't you?" said Nigel, showing his teeth.

"I wurn't hinting such, Mus' Furlonger—only t'other chaps in there do want to hear about the prison."

"Why?"

"Oh, it's always interesting to hear about prison—specially from chaps wot has bin there. We git a lot about 'em in Lloyd's and The People, but there's nothing like a fust-hand story—surelye!"

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Nigel laughed crudely.

"And it's a treat to meet a real convict—none of your petty larceny and misdemeanour fellers...."

"Well, here's greatness thrust upon me," said Furlonger, and swaggered into the bar.

The fuggy atmosphere affected him in much the same way as the smell of ether and dressings affects a man entering a hospital—the spirit of the place, assisted by crude outward manifestations, cowed him and made him its slave.

"Name it," said the shepherd.

"Porter."

It was three years since he had had a really stiff drink. He had never cared for liquor, indeed he had always been a man of singularly temperate life, a spare eater, a water drinker. But to-day a sudden desire consumed him—not only to drink, but to be drunken. He remembered the one occasion which he had been drunk. It was the day he had known definitely of the collapse of Wickham's scheme, and his own inevitable disgrace. He had sat in the kitchen at Sparrow Hall, drinking brandy till his head had fallen forward on the table and his legs trailed back behind his chair. Afterwards, there had been a shameful waking, but he could never forget how peace had crept in some mysterious physical way up his spine, from the base of his neck to his brain, with a soft tingling—it had been purely physical at first, then it had passed on to mental dulling and dimming.

To-day, as the frothy brown porter ran down his throat, he felt that gracious tingling, that[Pg 58] creeping upwards of relief. He looked round the bar. It was full of labouring men and smallholders, who stared at him with round eyes that were curious and would be ingratiating—they wanted to know him, because in their opinion he was better worth knowing than before he went to gaol.

"This is Mus' Breame of Gulledge," said the Little Cow shepherd. "How are you, Mus' Breame?—This is Mus' Furlonger of Sparrow Hall."

Mus' Breame held out a dark and hairy hand. Nigel's lips were twitching. Somehow he felt much more humiliated by the beery approval of these men than by the cold looks of their betters. However, he gave his short, dry laugh, and shook hands.

"And here's Mus' Dunk of Golden Compasses, and Mus' Boorer of Kenthouse Hatch—this here is old Adam Harmer, as has been cowman at Langerish this sixty year."

Nigel had seen all the men before, and had once sold a calf to Adam Harmer, but he realised that now he was meeting them on new terms.

"I wur wunst in the lock-up meself for a week," drawled old Harmer. "'Twas summat to do wud poaching, but so long ago as I forget 'xactly wot. Surelye!"

"Reckon prisons have changed unaccountable since your day," said Dunk, throwing a glance at Nigel, as if to show that an opening had been tactfully made for him. But Harmer clung to speech.

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"Reckon they have: surelye. In my days you'd hemmed liddle o' whitewash and all that—it wur starve and straw and bugs in my day, and two or three fellers together in a cell, either larkin' or murderin' each other."

The Little Cow shepherd looked uneasily at Furlonger.

"Yus—and the constables too, so different. Not near so haughty as they is now, but comfortable chaps, as 'ud let yer see yer gal fur a drink, and walk out o' the plaace fur half a sovereign."

The conversation was obviously getting into the wrong hands. The only person who looked interested was Nigel.

"Reckon all that's changed now," hastily put in Dunk—"they say now as gaol's lik a hotel—but not so free and easy, I take it, not so free and easy. Name it, Mus' Furlonger—see your glass is empty."

This time Nigel named a brandy.

"Reckon you can't order wot you lik fur dinner—and got to do your little bit o' work. But the gaol-buildings themselves, they're just lik hotels, they're palisses—handsomer than a workhouse."

"They're damned stinking hells," said Nigel—the brandy had loosed his tongue.

A murmur of approval ran through the bar. The great Furlonger had at last been drawn into the conversation. He sat at a small table, his fingers round his empty glass—about half a dozen voices begged him to "name it."

At first he hesitated. He was now a hero—for the first time for years—and yet it was a [Pg 60]hero-worship he could not swallow sober. But he wanted it. He wanted to be looked up to, for a change—to be deferred to, and exalted; and if he could not stand it sober, he must get drunk, that was all. He named another brandy.

The patrons of the bar were drawing round him. The barmaid was patting and pulling at her hair; even "Charley," the seedy nondescript that haunts all bars, and, unsalaried and ignored, brings the dirty glasses to the counter from the outlying tables—even "Charley" came forward with a deprecating grin and heel-taps of stout.

Nigel had gulped down the brandy, and, without exactly knowing why, had sprung to his feet.

"Give us a speech, Mus' Furlonger!" cried Boorer of the Kenthouse. "Tell us about gaol, and why it's damned and stinking."

"Have something to cool you fust," suggested Breame.

Nigel shook his head. He was in that convenient state when a man is sober enough to know he is drunk.

"Gaol's damned and stinking," he began, glaring sharply round him, "in the same way that this bar is damned and stinking—because it's full of men. But in gaol they're divided into two classes, top scoundrels and bottom scoundrels. The top scoundrels are the warders, with their eye at your door, and their hand inside your coat—in case you've got baccy."

A murmur of sympathy ran through his listeners, who had been a little taken aback by his opening phrases.

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"Baccy's one of the things you aren't allowed. There's lots of others—drink, and girls, and your own body and soul—the body your mother gave you, and the soul God gave you," he finished sententiously with a hiccup.

Some one thrust another glass into his hand, and he gulped it down. It burnt his throat.

"I once had a body, and I once had a soul, but they aren't mine any longer now. They belong to the state—hic—they're number seventy-six—that's me who's speaking to you—number seventy-six—no other name for three yearsh ... go and see the p'lice every month—convict seventy-six ... made me no better'n a child—hic—what'er you to do with a man when he's got too clever for you?—turn him into a child—a crying child—a damn crying child—like me——"

And Furlonger burst into tears.

The bar looked disconcerted. Nigel stood leaning up against the table, sobbing and hiccuping. The barmaid offered him her handkerchief, which was strongly scented, and edged with lace. Breame muttered—"We're unaccountable sorry, Mus' Furlonger," and Dunk suggested another brandy.

Suddenly Nigel flung round on them, his lips shrinking from his teeth, his eyes blazing.

"Damn you!" he cried thickly—"damn you all—you cheap cads—gaping and cringing and pumping—feeding on my misery and my shame—hic ... look at you all grinning ... you're pleased because I'm in hell. You'll go home and gas about me, and say 'poor fellow'—blast you!—I'm[Pg 62] better than anything in Lloyd's or the News of the World—hic—let me go—you're dirt, all of you—let me go——"

He plunged forward, and elbowed his way through them to the door. He was very unsteady, and crashed into the doorpost, bruising his forehead. But at last he was out in the sun-spattered afternoon—with a cool breeze bringing the scent of rain from the forest, and little clouds flying low.