Tracks in the Snow

I drew him out afterwards on the subject of music, on which he had much to tell me, while Vane-Cartwright and our host were, I think, talking together, and Callaghan appeared to be dozing. Thalberg was of course a German by family, but he talked English as if he had been in England from childhood. He belonged to that race of fair, square-bearded and square-foreheaded German business men, who look so much alike to us, only he was smaller and looked more insignificant than most of them, his eyes were rather near together, and he did not wear the spectacles of his nation. He told me that he was staying at the hotel, for golf he seemed to imply. He too was something in the City, and I remember having for some reason puzzled myself as to how Vane-Cartwright regarded him.

I must at this point add some account of the other persons who were in or about Peters’ house. There were two female servants in the house; an elderly cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Travers, who was sharp-visaged and sharp-tongued, but who made Peters very comfortable, and a housemaid, Edith Summers, a plain, strong and rather lumpish country girl, who was both younger and more intelligent than she looked. It subsequently appeared that these two were in the house the whole evening and night, and, for all that can be known, asleep all night in the servants’ quarters, which formed an annex to the house connected with it by a short covered way. In a cottage near the gate into the lane lived a far more notable person, Reuben Trethewy, the gardener and doer of odd jobs, a short, sturdy, grizzled man, of severe countenance, not over clean. Peters was much attached to him for his multifarious knowledge and skill. He had been a seaman at some time, had been, it seemed, all sorts of things in all sorts of places, and was emphatically a handy man. He was as his name implies a Cornishman, and had come quite recently to our neighbourhood, to which in the course of a roving existence he was attracted by the neighbourhood of his uncle, Silas Trethewy, a farmer who lived some three miles off. He was now a man of Methodistical professions, and most days, to do him justice, of Methodistical practice; but I, who was perhaps prejudiced against him by his hostility to the Church, believed him to be subject to bitter and sullen moods, knew that he was given to outbursts of drinking, and heard from his neighbours that drink took him in a curious way, affecting neither his gait, nor his head, nor his voice, nor his wits, but giving him a touch of fierceness which made men glad to keep out of his way. With him lived his wife and daughter. The wife was, I thought, a decent woman, who kept her house straight and who came to church; but I had then no decided impression about her, though she had for some time taught in my Sunday school, and had once or twice favoured me with a long letter giving her views about it. The daughter was a slight, childish-looking girl, whom I knew well, because she was about to become a pupil teacher, and who was a most unlikely person to play a part in a story of this kind.

Our party that evening broke up when, about ten o’clock, I rose to go; and Thalberg, whose best way to the hotel lay through the village, accompanied me as far as the Rectory, which was a quarter of a mile off and was the nearest house in the village. We walked together talking of German poetry and whatnot, and I cannot forget the disagreeable sense which came upon me in the course of our talk, that a layer of stupidity or of hard materialism, or both, underlay the upper crust of culture which I had seemed to find in the man when we had spoken of music. However, we parted good friends at the Rectory gate, and I was just going in when I recollected some question about the character of a candidate for Confirmation, on which I had meant to have spoken to Peters that night. I returned to his house and found him still in his library. The two guests who were staying in the house had already gone to bed. I got the information and advice which I had wanted⁠—it was about a wild but rather attractive young fellow who had once looked after a horse which Peters had kept, but who was now a groom in the largest private stables in the neighbourhood. As I was leaving, Peters took up some books, saying that he was going to read in bed. He stood with me for a moment at the front door looking at the frosty starlight. It was a clear but bitterly cold night. I well remember telling him as we stood there that he must expect to be disturbed by unusual noises that night, as a great jollification was taking place at the inn up the road, and my parishioners, who realised the prelate’s aspiration for a free rather than a sober England, would return past his house in various stages of riotous exhilaration. He said that he had more sympathy with them than he ought to have, and that in any case they should not disturb him. Very likely, he added, he would soon be asleep past rousing.

And so, about a quarter to eleven, I parted from him, little dreaming that no friendly eyes would ever meet his again.

II

I was up early on the 29th. Snow lay thick on the ground but had ceased falling, and it was freezing hard, when, while waiting for breakfast, I walked out as far as my gate on the village street to see what the weather was like. Suddenly Peters’ housemaid came running down to the village on her way,