Judkin of the Parcels

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

　　

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A figure in an indefinite tweed suit, carrying brown-paper parcels.That is what we met suddenly, at the bend of a muddy Dorsetshirelane, and the roan mare stared and obviously thought of a curtsey.The mare is road-shy, with intervals of stolidity, and there is notelling what she will pass and what she won't. We call her Redford.That was my first meeting with Judkin, and the next time thecircumstances were the same; the same muddy lane, the same ratherapologetic figure in the tweed suit, the same--or very similar--parcels. Only this time the roan looked straight in front of her.Whether I asked the groom or whether he advanced the information, Iforget; but someway I gradually reconstructed the life-history ofthis trudger of the lanes. It was much the same, no doubt, as thatof many others who are from time to time pointed out to one ashaving been aforetime in crack cavalry regiments and notedperformers in the saddle; men who have breathed into their lungs thewonder of the East, have romped through life as through a cotillon,have had a thrust perhaps at the Viceroy's Cup, and done fantastichorsefleshy things around the Gulf of Aden. And then a goldenstream has dried up, the sunlight has faded suddenly out of things,and the gods have nodded "Go." And they have not gone. They haveturned instead to the muddy lanes and cheap villas and the marked-down ills of life, to watch pear trees growing and to encourage hensfor their eggs. And Judkin was even as these others; the wine hadbeen suddenly spilt from his cup of life, and he had stayed to suckat the dregs which the wise throw away. In the days of his scornfor most things he would have stared the roan mare and her turn-outout of all pretension to smartness, as he would have frozen a cheapclaret behind its cork, or a plain woman behind her veil; and now hewas walking stoically through the mud, in a tweed suit that wouldeventually go on to the gardener's boy, and would perhaps fit him.The dear gods, who know the end before the beginning, were perhapsgrowing a gardener's boy somewhere to fit the garments, and Judkinwas only a caretaker, inhabiting a portion of them. That is what Ilike to think, and I am probably wrong. And Judkin, whose clotheshad been to him once more than a religion, scarcely less sacred thana family quarrel, would carry those parcels back to his villa and tothe wife who awaited him and them--a wife who may, for all we knowto the contrary, have had a figure once, and perhaps has yet a heartof gold--of nine-carat gold, let us say at the least--but assuredlya soul of tape. And he that has fetched and carried will explainhow it has fared with him in his dealings, and if he has brought thewrong sort of sugar or thread he will wheedle away the displeasurefrom that leaden face as a pastrycook girl will drive bluebottlesoff a stale bun. And that man has known what it was to coax thefret of a thoroughbred, to soothe its toss and sweat as it dancedbeneath him in the glee and chafe of its pulses and the glory of itsthews. He has been in the raw places of the earth, where the desertbeasts have whimpered their unthinkable psalmody, and their eyeshave shone back the reflex of the midnight stars--and he can immersehimself in the tending of an incubator. It is horrible and wrong,and yet when I have met him in the lanes his face has worn a look oftedious cheerfulness that might pass for happiness. Has Judkin ofthe Parcels found something in the lees of life that I have missedin going to and fro over many waters? Is there more wisdom in hisperverseness than in the madness of the wise? The dear gods know.I don't think I saw Judkin more than three times all told, andalways the lane was our point of contact; but as the roan mare wastaking me to the station one heavy, cloud-smeared day, I passed adull-looking villa that the groom, or instinct, told me was Judkin'shome. From beyond a hedge of ragged elder-bushes could be heard thethud, thud of a spade, with an occasional clink and pause, as ifsome one had picked out a stone and thrown it to a distance, and Iknew that HE was doing nameless things to the roots of a pear tree.Near by him, I felt sure, would be lying a large and late vegetablemarrow, and its largeness and lateness would be a theme ofconversation at luncheon. It would be suggested that it shouldgrace the harvest thanksgiving service; the harvest having been sogenerally unsatisfactory, it would be unfair to let the farmerssupply all the material for rejoicing.And while I was speeding townwards along the rails Judkin would beplodding his way to the vicarage bearing a vegetable marrow and abasketful of dahlias. The basket to be returned.

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