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But the hunger for humanity filled him with visions of a new society in which he would be one with his fellow-men, and then his enemies seemed so pitiful that he knew himself for fool and blind to waste a care upon them. So he sold the small property at Mill End, took up his few belongings, and left Chisley quietly by night, eager to leave all the old life behind him, anxious for the new.
I was never seen in Chisley again. I walked all that night. In London I read of the arrest of Done on a charge of murder. They had found my hat and my coat and the knife. The girl had told her story.
When James Done was five years old the only murder that had been committed in Chisley district within the memory of the oldest inhabitant was done by a member of little Jim's family. The murderer was tried, found guilty, and sentenced accordingly. The murder had a romantic plot and melodramatic tableaux, and was incorporated in the history of Chisley in fact, it was the history of Chisley.
For the time being his customary attitude of mind that of the pessimist sceptically weighing every emotion deserted him. He had been, in his small circle in Chisley, the one person with a tangible grievance against life, but here he found another at more bitter variance with Fate, and weaker by far for the fight. A mutual grievance is a strong bond. He was lifted out of himself.
He drifted into questions, and plied the other like a cross-examining lawyer eager to trap a witness; but Ryder knew every detail of the family history. He told Jim of a birthmark on his own body. He described the furnishing of the home in Chisley much as it remained within Jim's memory. 'You have not mentioned our sister, he said. 'She killed herself. Jim spoke with blunt brutality.
The situation recalled Chisley, and something of the old Ishmael stirred within him. He set his teeth and hurried on. 'Pea-souper! was the epithet most in favour amongst his tormentors. Why 'Pea-souper! Jim could not understand. He could see no aptness in its application to him, and yet it was certainly a term of mockery. 'Pea-souper! The taunt had an ignominious flavour.
Ryder's story brought Jim's youthful sufferings back to him with painful vividness; it awakened some animosities he had thought dead, and he recognised, though shrinking from the idea with actual terror, in Ryder's attitude towards his kind the frame of mind into which he was drifting when he broke away from Chisley and its associations.
When he had been on board the Francis Cadman a month or so, Jim was amazed to find that the attitude of the passengers and the crew towards himself was almost analogous to that of the people of Chisley. Nearly every phase of feeling that was manifested amongst the villagers presented itself here, and he was troubled. His first suspicion was that his identity had become known.
At this stage Chisley might have forgiven Jimmy, and condescended to forget, and even indulge itself in some sentimental compassion for the poor orphan, had the boy shown any disposition to accept these advances kindly and with proper gratitude; but for years Jim had been reasoning things out in a direct, childish way, and in his loneliness he was filled with an inveterate hatred.
A few hot words with the clerical caretaker of the Chisley conscience over the question of Sabbath observance exposed the young man the gaol-bird as an infidel and a scoffer. Jim was no infidel, but communities like Chisley do not under stand subtle distinctions in theology. Here was fresh occasion to fear and abhor Jim o' Mill End; here was justification for many evil prophecies.
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