human
Hullo! Home again! I suppose you forgot you had a brother?
gpt
John, by all that's surprising! Forget? Was it probable? Have I so many flesh-and-blood friends to remember? I arrived yesterday and called on you this morning, only to find you were at Drewsteignton; so I came to verify some figures at the cromlech, hoping we might meet the sooner.
human
I'll leave the ladder and walk by you and have a chat.
gpt
It's too hot to ride at a walk. Come you here to Bradmere Pool. We can lie down in the shade by the water, and I'll tether my horse for half an hour.
human
Pleasant to see you, said Martin.
gpt
And looking younger I do think. It's the open air. I'll wager you don't get slimmer in the waist-belt though.
human
Yes, I'm all right.
gpt
What's the main interest of life for you now?
human
Not quite sure. Depends on my mood. Just been buying a greyhound bitch at Drewsteignton. I'm going coursing presently. A kennel will amuse me. I spend most of my time with dogs. They never change. I turn to them naturally. But they overrate humanity.
gpt
Our interests are so different. Yet both belong to the fresh air and the wild places remote from towns. My book is nearly finished. I shall publish it in a year's time, or even less.
human
Have you come back to stop?
gpt
Yes, for good and all now.
human
You have found no wife in your wanderings?
gpt
No, John. I shall never marry. That was a dark spot in my life, as it was in yours. We both broke our shins over that.
human
I broke nothing--but another man's bones.
gpt
The old feeling is pretty well dead though. I look on and watch the man ruining himself; I see his wife getting hard-faced and thin, and I wonder what magic was in her, and am quite content. I wouldn't kick him a yard quicker to the devil if I could. I watch him drift there.
human
Don't talk like that, dear old chap. You're not the man you pretend to be, and pretend to think yourself. Don't sour your nature so. Let the past lie and go into the world and end this lonely existence.
gpt
Why don't you?
human
The circumstances are different. I am not a man for a wife. You are, if ever there was one.
gpt
I had him within a hair's-breadth once, resumed the other inconsequently.
human
Blanchard, I mean. There 's a secret against him. You didn't know that, but there is. Some black devilry for all I can tell. But I missed it. Perhaps if I knew it would quicken up my spirit and remind me of all the brute made me endure.
gpt
Yet you say the old feeling is dead!
human
So it is--starved. Hicks knew. He broke his neck an hour too soon. It was like a dream of a magnificent banquet I had some time ago. I woke with my mouth watering, just as the food was uncovered, and I felt so damned savage at being done out of the grub that I got up and went down-stairs and had half a pint of champagne and half a cold roast partridge! I watch Blanchard go down the hill--that's all. If this knowledge had come to me when I was boiling, I should have used it to his utmost harm, of course. Now I sometimes doubt, even if I could hang the man, whether I should take the trouble to do it.
gpt
Get away from him and all thought of him.
human
I do. He never crosses my mind unless he crosses my eyes. I ride past Newtake occasionally, and see him sweating and slaving and fighting the Moor. Then I laugh, as you laugh at a child building sand castles against an oncoming tide. Poor fool!
gpt
If you pity, you might find it in your heart to forgive.
human
My attitude is assured. We will call it one of mere indifference. You made up that row over the gate-post when his first child died, didn't you?
gpt
Yes, yes. We shall be friendly--we must be, if only for the sake of the memory of Chris. You and I are frank to-day. But you saw long ago what I tried to hide, so it is no news to you. You will understand. When Hicks died I thought perhaps after years--but that's over now. She 's gone.
human
Didn't you know? She 's back again.
gpt
Back! Good God!
human
Like as not you'd see her if you went over Rushford Bridge. She 's back with her mother. Queer devils, all of them; but I suppose you can have her for the asking now if you couldn't before. Damnably like her brother she is. She passed me two days ago, and looked at me as if I was transparent, or a mere shadow hiding something else.