Randalls Round (13 page)

He seemed quite confused about it.

“Well, would you like me to come up and give you a hand? Rather miserable, isn’t it, having your collars and socks mixed up with coins and junk like that?”

He flushed scarlet.

“Oh, I-I don’t – I’m afraid–”

I was extremely puzzled by his manner. Then he burst out:

“Well, if you really wouldn’t mind coming
with
me–”

It sounded like a kid afraid of the dark! But I just thought that he was too tired after his illness to want to do anything on his own. I’ve never been ill, and I felt quite bright for thinking of it.

We went up to his room – and really I didn’t blame Mrs. Burns. I’m not what you’d call neat myself, but this-! I’d never seen such a muddle. Bags and boxes and rucksacks all open and bulging with sweaters and shoes and books and all manner of things.

“You see, I wanted to find something – something I… not valuable, at all, but… I can’t remember where I put things… I was ill, you know, and -
and I must find it’,’
he broke out.

He was awfully worked up.

“Well, let’s put everything away,” I said, “and we’re bound to find it, if it’s here. What is the thing, anyway?”

But he only muttered to himself, something in a language I didn’t understand. I don’t think it was the stuff he and Freda used to talk, though. It sounded more uncouth than that.

We’d nearly finished when he found the box. Quite an ordinary wooden box. He threw himself on it, like a kid with a toy. Then he began to open it, with a kind of rather horrible eagerness; and then – he suddenly began to tremble visibly, got deadly white, and hurled the thing to the other end of the room. It must have been fairly heavy, for it made quite a thud, and I thought I heard a chinking sound, like metal.

“Here! Don’t go chucking treasure trove about like that!” I said, making a desperate effort to be jocular because I was too bewildered to do anything else.

I went across to pick the thing up, but Erik jumped at me and clutched my arm.

“Don’t
touch
it, don’t
touch
it,” he kept gabbling in a queer hoarse whisper. “Come away – do come away…”

I was afraid he was going to be ill again. He looked like death.

Now, as I say, I hadn’t the faintest idea what the chap was after or what to do; but I was simply aching with pity. So I thought I’d better just do what he wanted – humour him, you know. We went downstairs together. He clung on to my arm all the way, and, though his hands shook and trembled, there were bruises there when I went to bed.

Well, I’m not what’s called imaginative, Lord knows! But it was a queer business, wasn’t it? and Erik – I simply can’t begin to tell you what he looked like with his white face and staring black holes of eyes, and his terror – for it was nothing else. I’d never in my life – then – been afraid; not of the dark when I was a kid nor of animals nor accidents nor people nor, I’m afraid, God or the Devil. I suppose it was because I had no imagination. But that night I felt – well, uncomfortable, no more – for the first time in my life.

The sight of my cheery room with its wood fire and the bright warm light and the curtains and sporting prints put me right before I knew I was wrong. It was a ripping room, that. Pity I shall never see it again…

Even Erik seemed better in there. We sat down, one on each side of the fire (it was a chilly night, I remember, for June) and I, to give him time to recover himself, messed about with my pipe, which didn’t need any attention whatever. Again I rather patted myself on the back for my tact in this. But there was no betting on Erik.

“For heaven’s sake stop scraping that pipe, Spud,” he cried quite suddenly. “It doesn’t want it, and – and I can’t bear it…”

I’m afraid I gaped. He was beyond me. I’d no idea anyone could mind a little noise like that.

He smiled at me suddenly, like a kid.

“Oh, Spud, I’m sorry! I am an ungrateful brute,” he said. He was the most disarming chap.

“Bosh, old thing,” I said. “Only, you see I’m such a tough sort of bear. You’ll have to tell me every time I get on your nerves, because I simply don’t know enough to keep off.”

He smiled again. Now I’ve never seen any eyes in the least like Erik’s. They could be so bright and blue that they quite startled you and then in a second they’d be dead black – not what you generally call black but real black, all over. Extraordinary they were. And you could generally tell his mood by the colour of his eyes. Now they were as blue as the sea is on an August afternoon when you look over from Wether Down.

“Spud, you’re a – I mean, I’m most tremendously glad you’re here,” he said. “I want – I say, may I tell you something – something about what happened-”

I quite forgot Freda and the cure.

“I wish you would,” I said.

“I don’t know if you’ll ever understand,” said Erik slowly. “It’ll sound the most putrid rot, I expect. Perhaps it is! Anyhow, I can’t tell whether it is or not until I say it out to somebody else. If you go on turning a thing over in your own head you can get to believe
anything
.”

Now I know that he was right. You can. But then I said, “Rot! Either a thing’s true or it isn’t. No amount of thinking will make truth into a lie or a lie into truth.”

He smiled again, rather sadly.

“Well – I don’t know,” he said. “Anyhow, I want to tell you.”

So he began telling me how he’d gone to Norway and Iceland and these other places to do research into a dead life. Folklore and charms and dead religions and legends and things. He found out quite a lot, apparently: anyhow he got absolutely fascinated.

“I can’t tell you how it gripped me,” he said. “It was – extraordinary stuff. And the more I looked the more I found. I simply can’t tell you… I went north, and I met a man – old – oh, incredibly old. And he showed me how to see and to hear… One night, after he knew me a bit, we went to a barrow…”

His breath seemed to stop completely. He was quite white, like paper, and his eyes seemed to have gone into his head. They were black and dead.

I couldn’t understand in the very least. What was there to alarm or disturb the chap? He didn’t say what he’d seen and heard, of course, but still-!

“My dear Erik,” I said, “what a kid you are! You get an old Swede or Dane or something to tell you ghost stories, and you go out at night with him to some old tomb thing – and you’re upset for months! What did you do at the barrow?”

He shuddered violently. He tried to say something, but his voice died before I could hear it.

“What does one do at a barrow?” I went on jocularly: “You bury old kings and warriors, don’t you, with jewels and cups and things, in chambers inside a burial mound? Did you look for any loot?”

He nodded; and suddenly I saw light. “What – the box upstairs? You pinched some treasure? Oh, Erik, you
priceless
old fool!” I was weak with laughing. “I’m going to have a look.”

I ran upstairs whistling and went into Erik’s room. There lay the box where he’d pitched it. I went towards it, when something rushed past me, snatched it up, and hurled it right through the window.

It was Erik. He turned on me, eyes blazing, chest heaving – looked as if I’d tried to murder him!

“My dear chap!” I said when I could speak. “I wasn’t going to hurt the thing. What the devil’s the matter? – Don’t stare at me like that!” I snapped. “You’ve lost the bally thing now, not me. And you’ve broken a window into the bargain.”

His face changed. He got a bit more colour and his eyes looked saner. He looked like a man waking out of a dream, bewildered and a little ashamed.

“I – I’m awfully sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t know – I can’t explain. Let’s go downstairs. I’m awfully sorry,” he repeated.

When we were back before the fire I tried to get him to tell me what had happened at the barrow and what was in the box and why he’d got so mad: but he would say not one word. I’d shut him up for good. Only, just as we were going up to bed, he turned to me at the door in his old frank way.

“Spud,” he said, “look here. I’m no end sorry about this. It shan’t happen again. I’m going to chuck all this stuff – these dead things. I’m going to be sane -
if I can.
You’ll help me, won’t you, not to go back to them?”

“Why the devil should you ever go near Iceland again if you don’t want to?” I said. He puzzled me hopelessly.

“I don’t necessarily mean Iceland… Oh, I can’t explain! I hate it, and I long for it – I loathe it, and I must have it! It’s like a drunkard… Spud, keep me away from it!”

It was like a frightened kid asking you to keep ghosts off. All I could say was, “It’ll be quite all right, old chap. This isn’t Iceland, you know. No icefields and barrows here. Only good farmed land and friendly country… Now let’s get to bed.”

“It isn’t only Iceland,” he said slowly. “It’s everywhere – if you look… But I won’t look. I’ll chuck it. I
will”

And for some days after that he was quite normal and cheerful – seemed quite interested in the farm and the beasts and labourers and so on. Asked a lot about the history of the place, I remember, and why the valley behind Wether Down, where the mounds are, was called Kings Bottom… He spent the day fooling round, picking up stories from the countryfolk and getting to know the lie of the land. I only saw him at meals, and then he was so contented and happy that I cheered loudly and wrote to tell Freda that our cure was working and that Erik had quite forgotten his old dead ghosts and gods.

It was, perhaps, a week after that that I had to ride over to Marden le Winken, which is a village about a mile from the farm. It’s the sort of little place that I like because it has a small life of its own, and – oh, well, it’s homely. Artists come there and gas about the green and the old well and the church, until in sheer self-defence I retort with plain speaking about sanitation, which generally makes them sheer off. Well, that day – a very clear, hot, July day with a cloudless sky that looked as if it never could change or darken – I pulled up on the green; and there, sitting on the well coping I saw Erik and another person, I couldn’t quite make out whom. They were staring down the well as if they’d lost something. Now I’m always a bit anxious when nervy people start gazing earnestly at water or down cliffs or anything like that; so I called out to Erik.

“Oi! Erik!” I shouted. “Come here half a tick, will you?”

He got up and came over, walking as if he were in a trance. And then I got a start. Erik, of course, was queer and one made allowances, but his companion was Murky Glam the village idiot!

Now I’m not an absolute brute and I’ve a kind of respect for “God’s children” as Sussex people still call imbeciles. But I don’t like them. I don’t like anything deformed or abnormal. Still, I’d often spoken to Murky Glam – (no one knew why he was called that or what his real name was) – and he’d sometimes been over to Crows’ Hall with a message or something; and often and often, when I’ve been ploughing up on the downs above Kings Bottom, I’ve come across Murky sitting there on one of the humps that stand above the valley where the ancient yew-trees grow. But it’s one thing to speak civilly to a chap when you meet him, and quite another to sit with him for hours looking down a well. And I didn’t think that a village idiot was a very good companion for Erik anyway.

Well, it was a blazing hot day, and I’d been annoyed at having to leave the farm, and I’d been delayed by a man on the way in, and then Erik had startled and almost frightened me; so I snapped at him.

“What the devil were you doing at that well?” I asked.

Erik looked straight through me as if I wasn’t there. I don’t believe he knew who I was. He said nothing at all.

“Erik!”
I said angrily.

He seemed to wake up.

“Oh! Did anyone – did you speak to me?” He asked in the queer half-foreign accent he always had when he was dreaming.

“Yes,” I snapped, “I did. I should think you could have heard me half a mile away. What the deuce are you doing with that chap?” And I jerked my head towards Murky Glam.

Erik looked at me and I felt like a blustering bully.

“I was talking,” he said very quietly.

“You weren’t,” I said bluntly.

He flushed scarlet and turned away.

“Erik!” I said, “hold on. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. But you know-”

He didn’t seem to be listening. He was walking very slowly back to the well. Murky Glam took no notice whatever of either of us. It really was a bit uncanny. Broad midday – glorious summer weather – the homely little village green – and that chap dressed in rags, with odd bright patches and a broken cock’s feather stuck in his hat, sitting staring at the well. The water, like a bright eye twinkling in the sun, seemed to stare back. And there was Erik – my vegetating charge – walking straight into this fantastic picture.

I can’t tell you why, but I felt quite alarmed. It was like seeing a child walk over the edge of a cliff.

I vaulted down and caught Erik up.

“Erik!” I said, laying hold of his arm. “Erik – you
said
you’d chuck it.”

I didn’t myself know what he was to chuck.

He stood quite still; slowly he turned and faced me. Then he looked back at the well. Murky Glam was sitting up now, and looking at us with an idiot’s silly smile.

“You promised,” I said again.

“Yes. I know I did,” muttered Erik, his eyes on Murky Glam. “I will -
I will
.”

And he turned and went slowly off down the road to Crows’ Hall. He’d made quite a sensation in the village – of course he had! – and I knew there’d be endless chatter, which I hate. I was awfully annoyed. I made the best of it by turning into the inn, and casually mentioning that Erik was interested in imbeciles – I’m afraid I purposely gave the impression that he was a doctor on a holiday – and then I went on to the woman who calls herself Murky Glam’s mother and told her that I wouldn’t have the chap coming down to Crows’ Hall. It would have been about as useful to tell the fire not to let the kettle boil…

I was, even for a working farmer, quite exceptionally busy just then. The harvest was coming on in that sudden rush that sometimes happens when a hot August follows a wet July. There were storms knocking about, too, and I wanted to harvest as soon as possible. Then Bates, my excellent cowman, slipped on a greasy stone floor and broke his leg, and, as I didn’t trust his boy, I had to do most of the cow work myself. I’m not trying to make excuses. I know now that I ought to have lost the crops and even let the cows suffer rather than have allowed what happened. And I ought to have had my eyes opened, too, after that hot blue morning in Marden le Winkin. But on a farm you lose sight of everything but the land and the beasts. I thought myself lucky if I got off with a seventeen-hour day, and I rolled into bed only to sleep like a log. Even at meals I was preoccupied with plans and details of farm work, and only noticed that Erik was very quiet, and often late for meals. Sometimes I hardly saw him all day, for he cut out his food altogether as far as we could see, and only said he’d been “out” when I questioned him.