Vol. VI No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

WHERE I DID BEGIN
I soon had a blazing fire and close by made a rough bed of cushions
which we keep for garden use in summertime. It was only when the
man's face came into the full light of the lamp that I recognised him.
It was Williker. His grandparents had been well-to-do farmers in the
district in the days when farming was really profitable. His father
had been less prosperous and most of the cottagers in the small hamlet
were relations and of the same name, but they had little interest in
their ne'er-do-well cousin, who had long forfeited their respect by his
nomadic tendencies. Indeed that very "respect" made it impossible for
them to begin to understand the strange wayward being that throbbed
through life in a cage that only one key could have opened.
Before the war Williker had lived up on the hill in a rough hut,
that had nothing in its favour as a human dwelling except a view of
breath-taking beauty. He went to the war a bronzed well-set-up young
man with fear hidden in his heart, for his nature was one that pothouse
boys delight to terrify. He came back, still bronzed and well set up,
but middle aged and with a smashed hand. Having no head for business
he was easily persuaded to commute his pension. Probably in
the fine new suit in which they had demobilised him he felt that the
world was at his feet, and in triumph he bought a bicycle and a cornet.
He could play the cornet quite well and loved "a music" as they call
it here. Many a night distant strains of melody floated across the moonlit
marsh from the lonely hut. But the money was soon gone and from
that moment things began to go from bad to worse. His hand made
him an indifferent labourer and folk soon forgetting the pumped-up
sentimental obligations to Service men, employed younger and sounder
hands. His clothes became more and more disreputable, and he suffered
with his feet. He began not exactly to beg, but to cadge food, which
exasperated the propriety of his relations, distant in two senses, and at
last he vanished from the neighbourhood. Now here he was before
my fire.
As soon as possible I got a hot drink down him and covered him
with blankets for he was blue with cold, then I bribed a messenger with
an "allowance" to ride in the necessary three miles to fetch a doctor.
One of Williker's feet was booted, the other bound with old rags.
He looked at me with his soft sensitive eyes. His face always a little
weak was rendered more sharp by hunger, but it was a noble face,
almost Greek in its line. Maybe there had been Gipsy blood at some
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