No More Learning

My own servant came to me in the
twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to his drenched
body, and told me that a gentleman had called and wished to see some
one. Very much against my will, and because of the darkness of the
rooms, I went into the naked drawing-room, telling my man to bring the
lights. There might or might not have been a caller in the room--it
seems to me that I saw a figure by one of the windows, but when the
lights came there was nothing save the spikes of the rain without and
the smell of the drinking earth in my nostrils. I explained to my man
that he was no wiser than he ought to be, and went back to the veranda
to talk to Tietjens. She had gone out into the wet and I could hardly
coax her back to me--even with biscuits with sugar on top. Strickland
rode back, dripping wet, just before dinner, and the first thing he said
was:

"Has any one called? "

I explained, with apologies, that my servant had called me into the
drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer had tried to call
on Strickland, and, thinking better of it, fled after giving his name.
Strickland ordered dinner without comment, and since it was a real
dinner, with white tablecloth attached, we sat down.

At nine o'clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too.
Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up and went into
the least exposed veranda as soon as her master moved to his own room,
which was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tietjens. If a mere
wife had wished to sleep out-of-doors in that pelting rain, it would not
have mattered, but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the better animal.
I looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flog her with a whip. He
smiled queerly, as a man would smile after telling some hideous domestic
tragedy. "She has done this ever since I moved in here. "

The dog was Strickland's dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that
Strickland felt in being made light of.
Tietjens encamped outside my
bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered on the thatch,
and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown egg spattered
a barn door, but the light was pale blue, not yellow; and looking
through my slit bamboo blinds, I could see the great dog standing, not
sleeping, in the veranda, the hackles alift on her back, and her feet
planted as tensely as the drawn wire rope of a suspension bridge. In the
very short pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, but it seemed that
some one wanted me very badly. He, whoever he was, was trying to call
me by name, but his voice was no more than a husky whisper. Then the
thunder ceased and Tietjens went into the garden and howled at the low
moon. Somebody tried to open my door, and walked about and through the
house, and stood breathing heavily in the verandas, and just when I was
falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wild hammering and clamoring
above my head or on the door.

I ran into Strickland's room and asked him whether he was ill and had
been calling for me. He was lying on the bed half-dressed, with a pipe
in his mouth. "I thought you'd come," he said. "Have I been walking
around the house at all? "

I explained that he had been in the dining-room and the smoking-room and
two or three other places; and he laughed and told me to go back to bed.
I went back to bed and slept till the morning, but in all my dreams
I was sure I was doing some one an injustice in not attending to
his wants. What those wants were I could not tell, but a fluttering,
whispering, bolt-fumbling, luring, loitering some one was reproaching
me for my slackness, and through all the dreams I heard the howling of
Tietjens in the garden and the thrashing of the rain.

I was in that house for two days, and Strickland went to his office
daily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours a day, with Tietjens for
my only companion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable,
and so was Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I moved into the back
veranda and cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house,
but for all that it was fully occupied by a tenant with whom I had
no desire to interfere.