It must have escaped from a hollow in the chalk up behind. The earth could absorb no longer. The lady did not think of all this, for she hated questions of whence and wherefore, and the ways of the earth ("our dull stepmother”) bored her unspeakably. But the water, just the snake of water, was amusing, and she flung her golosh at it to dam it up. Then she wrote feverishly, “The subject of this memoir first saw the light in the middle of the night. It was twenty to eleven. His pa was a parson, but he was not his pa’s son, and never went to heaven.” There was the sound of a train, and presently white smoke appeared, rising laboriously through the heavy air. It distracted her, and for about a quarter of an hour she sat perfectly still, doing nothing. At last she pushed the spoilt paper aside, took afresh piece, and was beginning to write, “On May the 14th, 1842,” when there was a crunch on the gravel, and a furious voice said, “I am sorry for Flea Thompson.”
“I daresay I am sorry for him too,” said the lady; her voice was languid and pleasant. “Who is he?”
“Flea’s a liar, and the next time we meet he’ll be a football.” Off slipped a sodden ulster. He hung it up angrily upon a peg: the arbour provided several.
“But who is he, and why has he that disastrous name?”
“Flea? Fleance. All the Thompsons are named out of Shakespeare. He grazes the Rings.”
“Ah, I see. A pet lamb.”
“Lamb! Shepherd!”
“One of my Shepherds?”
“The last time I go with his sheep. But not the last tune he sees me. I am sorry for him. He dodged me today,”
“Do you mean to say”—she became animated—“that you have been out in the wet keeping the sheep of Flea Thompson?”
“I had to.” He blew on his fingers and took off his cap. Water trickled over his unshaven cheeks. His hair was so wet that it seemed worked upon his scalp in bronze.
“Get away, bad dog!” screamed the lady, for he had given himself a shake and spattered her dress with water. He was a powerful boy of twenty, admirably muscular, but rather too broad for his height. People called him “Podge” until they were dissuaded. Then they called him “Stephen” or “Mr. Wonham.” Then he said, “You can call me Podge if you like.”
“As for Flea—!” he began tempestuously. He sat down by her, and with much heavy breathing told the story,—“Flea has a girl at Wintersbridge, and I had to go with his sheep while he went to see her. Two hours. We agreed. Half an hour to go, an hour to kiss his girl, and half an hour back—and he had my bike. Four hours! Four hours and seven minutes I was on the Rings, with a fool of a dog, and sheep doing all they knew to get the turnips.”
“My farm is a mystery to me,” said the lady, stroking her fingers.
“Some day you must really take me to see it. It must be like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, with a chorus of agitated employers. How is it that I have escaped? Why have I never been summoned to milk the cows, or flay the pigs, or drive the young bullocks to the pasture?”
He looked at her with astonishingly blue eyes—the only dry things he had about him. He could not see into her: she would have puzzled an older and clever man. He may have seen round her.
“A thing of beauty you are not. But I sometimes think you are a joy for ever.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, you understand right enough,” she exclaimed irritably, and then smiled, for he was conceited, and did not like being told that he was not a thing of beauty. “Large and steady feet,” she continued, “have this disadvantage—you can knock down a man, but you will never knock down a woman.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I’m not likely—”
“Oh, never mind—never, never mind. I was being funny. I repent. Tell me about the sheep. Why did you go with them?”
“I did tell you. I had to.”
“But why?”
“He had to see his girl.”
“But why?”
His eyes shot past her again. It was so obvious that the man had to see his girl. For two hours though—not for four hours seven minutes.
“Did you have any lunch?”
“I don’t hold with regular meals.”
“Did you have a book?”
“I don’t hold with books in the open. None of the older men read.”
“Did you commune with yourself, or don’t you hold with that?”
“Oh Lord, don’t ask me!”
“You distress me. You rob the Pastoral of its lingering romance. Is there no poetry and no thought in England? Is there no one, in all these downs, who warbles with eager thought the Doric lay?”
“Chaps sing to themselves at times, if you mean that.”
“I dream of Arcady. I open my eyes. Wiltshire. Of Amaryllis: Flea Thompson’s girl. Of the pensive shepherd, twitching his mantle blue: you in an ulster. Aren’t you sorry for me?”
“May I put in a pipe?”
“By all means put a pipe in. In return, tell me of what you were thinking for the four hours and the seven minutes.”
He laughed shyly. “You do ask a man such questions.”
“Did you simply waste the time?”
“I suppose so.”
“I thought that Colonel Robert Ingersoll says you must be strenuous.”
At the sound of this name he whisked open a little cupboard, and declaring, “I haven’t a moment to spare,” took out of it a pile of “Clarion” and other reprints, adorned as to their covers with bald or bearded apostles of humanity. Selecting a bald one, he began at once to read, occasionally exclaiming, “That’s got them,” “That’s knocked Genesis,” with similar ejaculations of an aspiring mind. She glanced at the pile. Reran, minus the style. Darwin, minus the modesty. A comic edition of the book of Job, by “Excelsior,” Pittsburgh, Pa. “The Beginning of Life,” with diagrams. “Angel or Ape?” by Mrs. Julia P. Chunk. She was amused, and wondered idly what was passing within his narrow but not uninteresting brain. Did he suppose that he was going to “find out”? She had tried once herself, but had since subsided into a sprightly orthodoxy. Why didn’t he read poetry, instead of wasting his time between books like these and country like that?
The cloud parted, and the increase of light made her look up. Over the valley she saw a grave sullen down, and on its flanks a little brown smudge—her sheep, together with her shepherd, Fleance Thompson, returned to his duties at last. A trickle of water came through the arbour roof. She shrieked in dismay.
“That’s all right,” said her companion, moving her chair, but still keeping his place in his book.
She dried up the spot on the manuscript.
