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by
W. Somerset Maugham





The farm lay in a small valley among the Somersetshire hills, an old-fashioned stone house surrounded by barns and pens and out-houses. Over the doorway the date when it was built had been carved in the elegant figures of the period, I673, and the house, grey and weather-beaten, looked as much a part of the landscape as the trees that surrounded it. Anavenue of splendid elms led from the road to the neat garden. The people who lived here were as unexcitable, strong and modest as the house; their only boast was that ever since it was built they had been born and died in it: from father to son in one unbroken line. For three hundred years they had farmed the surrounding land. George Meadows was now a man of fifty, and his wife was a year or twoyounger. They were both fine, honest people in the prime of life; and their children, two sons and three girls, were handsome and strong. I have never seen a more united household. They were merry, industrious and kindly. Their life had a completeness that gave it a beauty as definite as that of a symphony of Beethoven’s or a picture by Titian. They were happy and they deserved their happiness. Butthe master of the house was not George Meadows (not by a long chalk, they said in the village); it was his mother. She was twice the man her son was, they said. She was a woman of seventy, tall, upright and dignified, with grey hair, and though her face was much wrinkled, her eyes were bright and shrewd. Her word was law in the house and on the farm; but she had humour, and if her rule was despoticit was also kindly. People laughed at her jokes and repeated them. She was a good business woman. She combined in a rare degree good will with a sense of the ridiculous. She was a character.
One day Mrs George stopped me on my way home. She was really excited. (Her mother-in-law was the only ‘Mrs Meadows’ we knew; George’s wife was only known as ‘Mrs George’.)
‘Who ever do you think iscoming here today?’ she asked me. ‘Uncle George Meadows. You know, he was in China.’
‘Why, I thought he was dead.’
‘We all thought he was dead.’
I had heard the story of Uncle George Meadows a dozen times, and it had amused me because it sounded like an old ballad: it was quite moving to come across it in real life. For Uncle George Meadows and Tom, his younger brother, had bothcourted Mrs Meadows when she was Emily Green, fifty years and more ago, and when she married Tom, George had gone away to sea.
They heard of him on the China coast. For twenty years now and then he had sent them presents; then there was no more news of him; when Tom Meadows died his widow wrote and told him, but received no answer; and at last they came to the conclusion that he must bedead. But two or three days ago to their astonishment they had received a letter from the matron of the sailors’ home at Portsmouth. It appeared that for the last ten years George Meadows, crippled with rheumatism, had lived there, and now, feeling that he had not much longer to live, wanted to see once more the house in which he was born. Albert Meadows, his great-nephew, had gone over to Portsmouthin the Ford to fetch him and he was to arrive that afternoon.
‘Just fancy,’ said Mrs George, ‘he’s not been here for more than fifty years. He’s never even seen my George, who’s fifty-one next birthday.’
‘And what does Mrs Meadows think of it?’ I asked.
‘Well, you know what she is. She sits there and smiles to herself. All she says is, “He was a good-looking young fellow when heleft, but not so steady as his brother,” That’s why she chose my George’s father. “But he’s probably quietened down by now,” she says.’
Mrs George asked me to look in and see him. With the simplicity of a country woman who had never been further from her home than London, she thought that because we had both been in China we must have something in common. Of course I accepted. I found the...