All the heads were turned the other way. But they would find his card in the hall, and if the man had left any message they would find that too. "What are you?" he demanded. "Who are you--your name--I don't care about that. But it interests me to class people, and up to now I have failed with you.""I--" He stopped. Ansell reflected that there are worse answers.
"I really don't know what I am. Used to think I was something special, but strikes me now I feel much like other chaps. Used to look down on the labourers. Used to take for granted I was a gentleman, but really I don't know where I do belong.""One belongs to the place one sleeps in and to the people one eats with.""As often as not I sleep out of doors and eat by myself, so that doesn't get you any further."A silence, akin to poetry, invaded Ansell. Was it only a pose to like this man, or was he really wonderful? He was not romantic, for Romance is a figure with outstretched hands, yearning for the unattainable. Certain figures of the Greeks, to whom we continually return, suggested him a little. One expected nothing of him--no purity of phrase nor swift edged thought. Yet the conviction grew that he had been back somewhere--back to some table of the gods, spread in a field where there is no noise, and that he belonged for ever to the guests with whom he had eaten.
Meanwhile he was simple and frank, and what he could tell he would tell to any one. He had not the suburban reticence. Ansell asked him, "Why did Mrs. Failing turn you out of Cadover? Ishould like to hear that too."
"Because she was tired of me. Because, again, I couldn't keep quiet over the farm hands. I ask you, is it right?" He became incoherent. Ansell caught, "And they grow old--they don't play games--it ends they can't play." An illustration emerged. "Take a kitten--if you fool about with her, she goes on playing well into a cat.""But Mrs. Failing minded no mice being caught.""Mice?" said the young man blankly. "What I was going to say is, that some one was jealous of my being at Cadover. I'll mention no names, but I fancy it was Mrs. Silt. I'm sorry for her if it was.
Anyhow, she set Mrs. Failing against me. It came on the top of other things--and out I went.""What did Mrs. Silt, whose name I don't mention, say?"He looked guilty. "I don't know. Easy enough to find something to say. The point is that she said something. You know, Mr.--I don't know your name, mine's Wonham, but I'm more grateful than I can put it over this tobacco. I mean, you ought to know there is another side to this quarrel. It's wrong, but it's there."Ansell told him not to be uneasy: he lad already guessed that there might be another side. But he could not make out why Mr. Wonham should have come straight from the aunt to the nephew.
They were now sitting on the upturned seat. "What We Want," a good deal shattered, lay between them.
"On account of above-mentioned reasons, there was a row. I don't know--you can guess the style of thing. She wanted to treat me to the colonies, and had up the parson to talk soft-sawder and make out that a boundless continent was the place for a lad like me. I said, 'I can't run up to the Rings without getting tired, nor gallop a horse out of this view without tiring it, so what is the point of a boundless continent?' Then I saw that she was frightened of me, and bluffed a bit more, and in the end I was nipped. She caught me--just like her! when I had nothing on but flannels, and was coming into the house, having licked the Cadchurch team. She stood up in the doorway between those stone pilasters and said, 'No! Never again!' and behind her was Wilbraham, whom I tried to turn out, and the gardener, and poor old Leighton, who hates being hurt. She said, 'There's a hundred pounds for you at the London bank, and as much more in December.
