AN UMBRELLA MAN 189 



was small and round, almost covered by bristly grey hair 

 like lichen, through which peered quiet blue eyes; 

 the face was irregular, almost shapeless, like dough being 

 kneaded, worn by travel, passion, pain, and not a few 

 blows; where the skin was visible at all through the 

 hair it was like red sandstone; his teeth were white and 

 strong and short like an old dog's. His rough neck 

 descended into a striped half-open shirt, to which was 

 added a loose black waistcoat divided into thin perpen- 

 dicular stripes by ribs of faded gold; his trousers, loose 

 and patched and short, approached the colour of a hen 

 pheasant; his bare feet were partly hidden by old black 

 boots. His voice was hoarse and, for one of his enduring 

 look, surprisingly small, and produced with an effort and 

 a slight jerk of the head. 



He was a Sussex man, born in the year 1831, on June 

 the twenty-first (it seemed a foppery in him to remember 

 the day, and it was impossible to imagine with what 

 ceremony he had remembered it year by year, during half 

 a century or near it, on the roads of Sussex, Kent, Surrey 

 and Hampshire). His mother was a Wild — there were 

 several of them buried not far away under the carved 

 double-headed tombstones by the old church with the 

 lancet windows and the four yews. He was a labourer's 

 son, and he had already had a long life of hoeing and 

 reaping and fagging when he enlisted at Chatham. He 

 had kept his musket bright, slept hard and wet, and 

 starved on thirteenpence a day, moving from camp to 

 camp every two years. He had lost his youth in battle, 

 for a bullet went through his knee; he lay four months 

 in hospital, and they took eighteen pieces of bone out of 

 his wound — he was still indignant because he was 



