The young artist made as though he would resume his work, but the two men seemed disinclined for some reason to leave his side, Behind his back, as he sat hunched up upon a fallen log, they were now making mute signs to each other, while the little dumb girl stared in amazement at them.
‘Tell ’im plain out,’ whispered the bearded shadow to the burly confounder of parsons, ‘it mayn’t be as us thinks it is, anyway knowing is knowing and the written word’s the written word.’
The burly man fumbled in his pocket and produced a dirty scrap of newspaper.
The preoccupied painter, glancing up at the child in front of him, caught such a look of alarm upon her face that he turned his head sharply. ‘Anything the matter?’ he inquired.
The foreman walked slowly round and stood in front of him, while the carter, shuffling uneasily after his superior, peered round at the hedge, the bushes, the pond and the hemlocks, as if expecting a sudden onrush of interested spectators hurrying to witness this dramatic occurrence.
‘Us seed ’ee from the yard, us did, mister,’ murmured the second man, giving his stammering companion a little dig in the side, ‘an us thought the sooner we’d ’a told ’ee what ’twas ’as been and got itself brought to light in them newspapers, the sooner ’ee’d be acquainted with the injured party, like.’
‘’Tweren’t I and’twern’t Charley as read about this terrible thing,’ murmured the lusty foreman in a tone of profound apology, evidently fearing, as some ancient slave of the house of Oedipus might once have feared, lest the bearer of evil news should himself meet with disaster.
‘No! ’tweren’t Mr Priddle and ’tweren’t I what discovered that your mother had been runned over by a railway train.’ Twas old Miss Stone what lives over the hill ‘as told us.’
Robert Canyot leapt to his feet and snatched the bit of paper out of the man’s hand. It was a brief statement that a lady who gave a London address had been knocked down by a shunted track at Selshurst Station and had been carried to the hospital. Her name was given as Mrs Canyot of Maida Vale. A horrible cold shiver ran down the spine of the young man and for a moment he felt dizzy. His poor sweet darling mother! She must have wanted to pay him a surprise visit. But why? It was hardly credible that she should do such a thing at her age and with her methodical habits. It couldn’t be true! He looked at the notice again, holding it with a hand that trembled. Maida Vale? There could hardly be another Mrs Canyot who lived in that district. It must be his mother. And yet — to come like that — without telling him. It was utterly and entirely unlike her. He stood gazing helplessly at the paper in his hand calculating remote chances.
Robert Canyot was an only son. His father had been a wine merchant, a man of the same type as John Ruskin’s father, combining shrewdness, puritanism, and a certain queer turn or twist for what he regarded as ‘art’.
The little lady of Maida Vale had done all she could to give her boy everything in this mad world that youth could desire. She had let him run wild. She had sent him to school and removed him from school; sent him to Oxford and removed him from Oxford. Finally she had made over to him half of her income and let him follow the delight of his eyes and the fancies of his heart unrestrained by any responsibility. The result was that the sharp contrast, between his mother’s unbounded infatuation and the rough shocks of the world that cared nothing what became of him, made out of quite sound material a sort of cynical misanthropic queer one.
It was not however a very cynical Robert who gazed now, agitated and startled, into the narrow eyes of Silas Priddle and the great watery eyes of Charley Budge.
‘Hoping there’s no offence, mister, in us having taken the liberty of showing ’ee that there bit ’o news. It may be as it’s your poor dear Mother what’s runned into a railway train, and it may be as ’tisn’t. If ’tis, ’tis God’s will. If ’tisn’t I reckons ’tis somebody else’s mother; but seeing how it’s upset ’ee like I be afeerd it is as ’tis there writ’ down.’
Saying these words the foreman of Toat Farm planted his feet firmly in the long grass, screwed up his eyes, scratched his head, and whistled a few notes of the particular call with which he was accustomed to summon his wife’s ducks at the hour of sunset.
‘Charley,’ he remarked after a long pause, during which the young man read and re-read the bit of newspaper, ‘us must be getting on with the beasts, us must.’
‘Aye, aye, Mr Priddle,’ agreed the other. ‘Beasts must be served funeral days same as wedding days, as old Farmer Patchem used to tell us every time ’is missus ’ad a still-born. “Life is as ’tis, Charley,” ’ee used to say, “and them as takes it quiet’ll last longest and their children’s children’ll call ’em blessed.”’
Having uttered these words of wisdom the two sages moved away. ‘The poor lad be dazed-like,’ said the foreman. ‘Did ’ee mark, Charley, how ’ee squinnied with the eyes o’n, when ’ee got tellin of funerals? A reckon ‘ee might o’ bashed it out, ’ee did, too point, Charley, than ’ee was. Sort o’ bashed it out, ’ee did, too plumb and positive. Maybe the old woman isn’t broken up complete. Some of them elderly females is wonderful hard to kill; same as cats I reckon.’
Well! no use standing here, thought Canyot. I must off to Sets-hurst. If it is the poor darling, I shall stay the night there. It may be nothing more than a nervous shock, after all. These papers exaggerate so. And it may not be her at all. But if it isn’t, it’s certainly an odd coincidence.
He felt a small hand softly and timidly pulling at the sleeve that hung empty. Robert had lost his arm in Flanders and possessed two medals for courage in the field. He looked down and patted the child’s head, ashamed of having forgotten her. The little dumb girl was making pitiful sounds with her poor mouth.
‘Poor little water rat!’ he murmured. ‘Poor little Sally-Maria! This is a bad day for us, isn’t it? But never mind! Say your prayers for your friend’s Mummy. Let’s hope that when we meet again all will be well.’
The child put her arms around him holding his sleeve tightly and hiding her face.
‘There — there — my little one,’ he said, extricating himself from her clinging arms. ‘Don’t worry any more about it. Run home to Auntie and be a good little kind faithful water rat. We’ll see each other again. Goodbye and God bless you!’ And he broke from her and started off at a run in the direction of Littlegate. I’ll just tell them where I’m going, he said to himself, so if I’m away for the night they won’t be scared. Even to his own heart he used the pronoun ‘they’, but his thoughts circled round Nelly and the sad walk he had had with her the night before. I’ve go to face it, he said to himself as he followed the pack-horse track along the lower slopes of the Downs. If she has never really cared for me as she thought she did, I suppose I can’t blame her. But if she’s simply fickle, and just flattered by that cunning old Frenchy’s blarney — well then, to the devil with her! She’s no better than a flirtatious little cat!
The path Canyot followed through the late afternoon sunshine lay through the open country. Its height above the valley gave him a clear view of many outstretched white roads and lanes. As he approached the widespread park-like slopes that rose up from West Horthing to the crest of the hills he obtained an unimpeded survey over the whole winding length of the narrow chalk track which led from Furze Lodge to Littlegate.