Luke entered the enclosure through a wide-open wooden gate and glanced quickly round him. There was the Manor wall, as mellow and sheltering as ever, even on such a day of clouds. There was their favourite tombstone, with its long inscription to the defunct seignorial house. But of James Andersen there was not the remotest sign.
Where the devil had his angry brother gone? Luke’s passionate anxiety began to give place to a certain indignant reaction. Why were people so ridiculous? These volcanic outbursts of ungoverned emotion on trifling occasions were just the things that spoiled the harmony and serenity of life. Where, on earth, could James have slipped off to? He remembered that they had more than once gone together to the King’s Arms — the unpretentious Hullaway tavern. It was just within the bounds of possibility that the wanderer, finding their other haunts chill and unappealing, had taken refuge there.
He recrossed the common, waved his hand to Phyllis, who seemed to have taken his speech quite seriously and was patiently seated on the stocks, and made his way hurriedly to the little inn.
Yes — there, ensconced in a corner of the high settle, with a half-finished tankard of ale by his side, was his errant brother.
James rose at once to greet him, showing complete friendliness, and very small surprise. He seemed to have been drinking more than his wont, however, for he immediately sank back again into his corner, and regarded his brother with a queer absent-minded look.
Luke ordered a glass of cider and sat down close to him on the settle.
“I am sorry,” he whispered, laying his hand on his brother’s knee. “I didn’t mean to annoy you. What you said was quite true. I treated Annie very badly. And Ninsy is altogether different. You’ll forgive me, won’t you, Daddy Jim?”
James Andersen pressed his hand. “It’s nothing,” he said in rather a thick voice. “It’s like everything else, it’s nothing. I was a fool. I am still a fool. But it’s better to be a fool than to be dead, isn’t it? Or am I talking nonsense?”
“As long as you’re not angry with me any longer,” answered Luke eagerly, “I don’t care how you talk!”
“I went to the churchyard — to our old place — you know,” went on his brother. “I stayed nearly an hour there — or was it more? Perhaps it was more. I stayed so long, anyway, that I nearly went to sleep. I think I must have gone to sleep!” he added, after a moment’s pause.
“I expect you were tired,” remarked Luke rather weakly, feeling for some reason or other, a strange sense of disquietude.
“Tired?” exclaimed the recumbent man, “why should I be tired?” He raised himself up with a jerk, and finishing his glass, set it down with meticulous care upon the ground beside him.
Luke noticed, with an uncomfortable sense, of something not quite usual in his manner, that every movement he made and every word he spoke seemed the result of a laborious and conscious effort — like the effort of one in incomplete control of his sensory nerves.
“What shall we do now?” said Luke with an air of ease and indifference. “Do you feel like strolling back to Nevilton, or shall we make a day of it and go on to Roger-Town Ferry and have dinner there?”
James gave vent to a curiously unpleasant laugh. “You go, my dear, “You he said,” and leave me where I am.”
Luke began to feel thoroughly uncomfortable. He once more laid his hand caressingly on his brother’s knee. “You have really forgiven me?” he pleaded. “Really and truly?”
James Andersen had again sunk back into a semicomatose state in his corner. “Forgive?” he muttered, as though he found difficulty in understanding the meaning of the word, “forgive? I tell you it’s nothing.”
He was silent, and then, in a still more drowsy murmur, he uttered the word “Nothing” three or four times. Soon after this he closed his eyes and relapsed into a deep slumber.
“Better leave ’un as ’un be,” remarked the landlord to Luke. “I’ve had my eye on ’un for this last ’arf hour. ’A do seem mazed-like, looks so. Let ’un bide where ’un be, master. These be wonderful rumbly days for a man’s head. ’Taint what ’ee’s ’ad, you understand; to my thinking, ’tis these thunder-shocks wot ’ave worrited ’im.”
Luke nodded at the man, and standing up surveyed his brother gravely. It certainly looked as if James was settled in his corner for the rest of the morning. Luke wondered if it would be best to let him remain where he was, and sleep off his coma, or to rouse him and try and persuade him to return home. He decided to take the landlord’s advice.
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll just leave him for a while to recover himself. You’ll keep an eye to him, won’t you, Mr. Titley? I’ll just wander round a bit, and come back. Maybe if he doesn’t want to go home to dinner, we’ll have a bite of something here with you.”
Mr. Titley promised not to let his guest out of his sight. “I know what these thunder-shocks be,” he said. “Don’t you worry, mister. You’ll find ’un wonderful reasonable along of an hour or so. ’Tis the weather wot ’ave him floored ’im. The liquor ’ee’s put down wouldn’t hurt a cat.”
Luke threw an affectionate glance at his brother’s reclining figure and went out. The reaction from his exaggerated anxiety left him listless and unnerved. He walked slowly across the green, towards the group of elms.
It was now past noon and the small children who had been loitering under the trees had been carried off to their mid-day meal. The place seemed entirely deserted, except for the voracious ducks in the mud of the Great Pond. He fancied at first that Phyllis Santon had disappeared with the children, and a queer feeling of disappointment descended upon him. He would have liked at least to have had the opportunity of refusing himself the pleasure of talking to her! He approached the enormous elm under which stood the stocks. Ah! She was still there then, his little Nevilton acquaintance. He had not seen her sooner, because she was seated on the lowest roots of the tree, her knees against the stocks themselves.
“Hullo, child!” he found himself saying, while his inner consciousness told itself that he would just say one word to her, so that her feelings should not be hurt, and then stroll off to the churchyard. “Why, you have fixed yourself in the very place where they used to make people sit, when they put them in the stocks!”
“Have I?” said the girl looking up at him without moving. “’Tis curious to think of them days! They do say folks never tasted meat nor butter in them old times. I guess it’s better to be living as we be.”
Luke’s habitual tone of sentimental moralizing had evidently set the fashion among the maids of Nevilton. Girls are incredibly quick at acquiring the mental atmosphere of a philosopher who attracts them. The simple flattery of her adoption of his colour of thought made it still more difficult for Luke to keep his vow to the Spinners of Destiny.
“Yes,” he remarked pensively, seating himself on the stocks above her. “It is extraordinary, isn’t it, to think how many generations of people, like you and me, have talked to one another here, in fine days and cloudy days, in winter and summer — and the same old pond and the same old elms listening to all they say?”