There came into my head some prowling dream of meeting her. I went along the lane towards Woking, the lane down which we had walked five months ago in the wind and rain.
I mooned for a time in our former footsteps, then swore and turned back across the fields, and then conceived a distaste for Cothope and went Downward. At last I found myself looking down on the huge abandoned masses of the Crest Hill house.
That gave my mind a twist into a new channel. My uncle came uppermost again. What a strange, melancholy emptiness of intention that stricken enterprise seemed in the even evening sunlight, what vulgar magnificence and crudity and utter absurdity! It was as idiotic as the pyramids. I sat down on the stile, staring at it as though I had never seen that forest of scaffold poles, that waste of walls and bricks and plaster and shaped stones, that wilderness of broken soil and wheeling tracks and dumps before. It struck me suddenly as the compactest image and sample of all that passes for Progress, of all the advertisement-inflated spending, the aimless building up and pulling down, the enterprise and promise of my age. This was our fruit, this was what he had done, I and my uncle, in the fashion of our time. We were its leaders and exponents, we were the thing it most flourishingly produced. For this futility in its end, for an epoch of such futility, the solemn scroll of history had unfolded....
"Great God!" I cried, "but is this Life?"
For this the armies drilled, for this the Law was administered and the prisons did their duty, for this the millions toiled and perished in suffering, in order that a few of us should build palaces we never finished, make billiard-rooms under ponds, run imbecile walls round irrational estates, scorch about the world in motor-cars, devise flying-machines, play golf and a dozen such foolish games of ball, crowd into chattering dinner parties, gamble and make our lives one vast, dismal spectacle of witless waste! So it struck me then, and for a time I could think of no other interpretation. This was Life! It came to me like a revelation, a revelation at once incredible and indisputable of the abysmal folly of our being.
III
I was roused from such thoughts by the sound of footsteps behind me.
I turned half hopeful--so foolish is a lover's imagination, and stopped amazed. It was my uncle. His face was white--white as I had seen it in my dream.
"Hullo!" I said, and stared. "Why aren't you in London?"
"It's all up," he said....
"Adjudicated?"
"No!"
I stared at him for a moment, and then got off the stile.
We stood swaying and then came forward with a weak motion of his arms like a man who cannot see distinctly, and caught at and leant upon the stile. For a moment we were absolutely still. He made a clumsy gesture towards the great futility below and choked. I discovered that his face was wet with tears, that his wet glasses blinded him. He put up his little fat hand and clawed them off clumsily, felt inefficiently for his pocket-handkerchief, and then, to my horror, as he clung to me, he began to weep aloud, this little, old worldworn swindler. It wasn't just sobbing or shedding tears, it was crying as a child cries. It was oh! terrible!
"It's cruel," he blubbered at last. "They asked me questions.
They KEP' asking me questions, George."
He sought for utterance, and spluttered.
"The Bloody bullies!" he shouted. "The Bloody Bullies."
He ceased to weep. He became suddenly rapid and explanatory.
"It's not a fair game, George. They tire you out. And I'm not well. My stomach's all wrong. And I been and got a cold. I always been li'ble to cold, and this one's on my chest. And then they tell you to speak up. They bait you--and bait you, and bait you. It's torture. The strain of it. You can't remember what you said. You're bound to contradict yourself. It's like Russia, George.... It isn't fair play.... Prominent man. I've been next at dinners with that chap, Neal; I've told him stories--and he's bitter! Sets out to ruin me. Don't ask a civil question--bellows." He broke down again. "I've been bellowed at, I been bullied, I been treated like a dog. Dirty cads they are! Dirty cads! I'd rather be a Three-Card Sharper than a barrister; I'd rather sell cat's-meat in the streets.
"They sprung things on me this morning, things I didn't expect.
They rushed me! I'd got it all in my hands and then I was jumped. By Neal! Neal I've given city tips to! Neal! I've helped Neal....
"I couldn't swallow a mouthful--not in the lunch hour. I couldn't face it. It's true, George--I couldn't face it. I said I'd get a bit of air and slipped out and down to the Embankment, and there I took a boat to Richmond. Some idee. I took a rowing boat when I got there and I rowed about on the river for a bit.
A lot of chaps and girls there was on the bank laughed at my shirt-sleeves and top hat. Dessay they thought it was a pleasure trip. Fat lot of pleasure! I rowed round for a bit and came in. Then I came on here. Windsor way. And there they are in London doing what they like with me.... I don't care!"
"But" I said, looking down at him, perplexed.
"It's abscondin'. They'll have a warrant."
"I don't understand," I said.
"It's all up, George--all up and over.
"And I thought I'd live in that place, George and die a lord!
It's a great place, reely, an imperial--if anyone has the sense to buy it and finish it. That terrace--"
I stood thinking him over.
"Look here!" I said. "What's that about--a warrant? Are you sure they'll get a warrant? I'm sorry uncle; but what have you done?"
"Haven't I told you?"
"Yes, but they won't do very much to you for that. They'll only bring you up for the rest of your examination."
He remained silent for a time. At last he spoke--speaking with difficulty.
"It's worse than that. I've done something. They're bound to get it out. Practically they HAVE got it out."
"What?"
"Writin' things down--I done something."
For the first time in his life, I believe, he felt and looked ashamed. It filled me with remorse to see him suffer so.
