No More Learning

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. I never saw him, but I could see the curtains
between the rooms quivering where he had just passed through; I could
hear the chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had
just quitted them; and I could feel when I went to get a book from
the dining-room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front
veranda till I should have gone away.
Tietjens made the twilight more
interesting by glaring into the darkened rooms, with every hair erect,
and following the motions of something that I could not see. She never
entered the rooms, but her eyes moved, and that was quite sufficient.
Only when my servant came to trim the lamps and make all light and
habitable, she would come in with me and spend her time sitting on her
haunches watching an invisible extra man as he moved about behind my
shoulder. Dogs are cheerful companions.

I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over to
the club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality,
was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for his
house and its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiled
very wearily, but without contempt, for he is a man who understands
things. "Stay on," he said, "and see what this thing means. All you have
talked about I have known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait.
Tietjens has left me. Are you going too? "

I had seen him through one little affair connected with an idol that had
brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had no desire to help
him through further experiences. He was a man to whom unpleasantnesses
arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.

Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely,
and would be happy to see him in the daytime, but that I didn't care to
sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out
to lie in the veranda.