The Documents in the Case

to refuse, especially as he was really feeling rather played-out after several months’ strenuous work in Paris. After the unbearably hot and prolonged summer, the prospect of pottering about a bit among the lush grass and deep lanes of Devon had seemed attractive, even when coupled with the boredom of Harrison’s company. “As a matter of fact,” he added, “the old boy is not so bad when you get him in the country by himself. This is the kind of life that really suits him. As a family man he is a failure, but he quite comes out and blossoms doing the odd bits of work about the shack. And he certainly is a first-class cook, though up to the present I have successfully avoided his nettle-broth and stewed toadstools, not wishing to be cut off in my youth. This is a pretty place⁠—miles away from everywhere, of course, stuck down on a circumbendible lane which runs down from Manaton (half a dozen houses and a pub) to the deep valley which separates the Manaton Ridge and Becky Falls from Lustleigh Cleave. The only neighbours are the sheep and cows⁠—an old ram walked into the kitchen the other day. Harrison was grunting over the stove and didn’t see him at first. ‘Be-hey-hey,’ says the ram; ‘Eh-heh-heh,’ bleats Harrison, looking up; and damn it, he was so exactly like the old fellow that he wanted nothing but a pair of horns to complete the resemblance! We wash the crockery, and then Harrison takes his newest superfine painting-box, with the collapsible legs and all the rest of it, and trundles away into the valley, where he sits all day in a gorse-bush, trying to put the tumbling of the stream on paper. The drought has dried it up a good bit, but never was anything so desiccated as the arid little plan of it he produces with pride for me to see, painted with a brush with three hairs in it⁠—peck, peck, scratch and dab⁠—like a canary scrabbling for seed. Why don’t I take the opportunity to do some work in this glorious place? No, thanks; I’m a figure and portrait wallah⁠—besides, I’ve come here for a rest. It is not mine to sing the stately grace⁠—I smoke my pipe in the doorway, drive the cattle out of the back garden, and see that the stewpot doesn’t boil too fast.

“So here I am, in comfortable exile with Menelaus, while Helen sits at home and sews shirts. And it’s a better way, too. One mustn’t take these things too seriously. Damned if Harrison hasn’t got the right idea after all. Look after the grub and leave women to their own fool devices. They give a man no peace. You, being married, have perhaps got your house in order. Do you find it as easy to do your work, now that you’re hooked up to a whirlwind? But, of course, your whirlwind works too, and helps to turn the mill-wheel, which no doubt makes all the difference.”

Lathom went on in this strain for a page or so. Cynicism from him was something new, and I took it to spell restlessness of some sort or other. Either, I thought, he was getting fed up with the lady’s exactions, or the trio had arrived at a modus vivendi. It was no affair of mine.

He ended up by saying that he would be running up to town in a day or two and would look me up. I was then living in Bloomsbury⁠—in fact, in my present house⁠—and my wife was away with her people. I had arranged to go with her, but at the last moment an urgent matter turned up⁠—an Introduction to an anthology, which had to be rushed out in a great hurry before some other publisher get hold of the idea, and I had to stay behind to get the thing fairly going, as it meant a good deal of work at the British Museum.

When Lathom turned up at about one o’clock on the 19th, I explained this to him and apologised for having no lunch to offer him. Like most men, and women, too, when left to themselves, I found solitary meals uninspiring. So, apparently, did “the girl,” whom, till my wife left me, I had imagined to be a good cook. Not that I had ever expected Elizabeth to leave her writing to see after my meals, so I can only suppose that her moral influence was enough to make the difference between roast mutton and raw.

Lathom commiserated me, and we went and had some grub at the Bon Bourgeois. He seemed to be in high spirits, when he thought about it, but had a way of going off into fits of abstraction which suggested nerves or preoccupation of some kind. He asked about the anthology and my work generally with apparent interest, and then, to my surprise, broke suddenly into my description of the plot of my new novel by saying:

“Look here, if the wife’s away, why don’t you come down to the Shack with me for the weekend? It’ll do you good, freshen you up and all that.”

“Good heavens,” I said, “it’s Harrison’s place. He won’t want me.”

“Oh yes, he’d love to have you. Oh, rather. In fact, he only said to me yesterday, when I was starting off, he wished I could bring you back with me. He’s quite forgotten all that misunderstanding. He’s rather distressed about it, really. Thinks he did you an injustice. Would like to make it up. He says you must be harbouring resentment, because you’ve been in town all this time and haven’t been to see them.”

“That’s nonsense,” I said. “You know why I’ve thought it best to keep out of it.”

“Yes, but he doesn’t. Naturally he thinks you’re offended.”

“Didn’t you tell him I was busy?”

“Of course. Oh, yes. Played up the popular literary man for all it was worth. So he said, of course you were too important nowadays to remember your