Returning from the English church at Monte Carlo towards his hotel, old Trevillian paused at a bend in the road to rest his thin calves. Through a mimosa-tree the sea was visible, very blue, and Trevillian’s eyes rested on it with the filmy brown stare of old age.
Monte Carlo was changed, but that blue, tideless, impassive sea was the same as on his first visit forty-five years ago, and this was pleasant to one conservative by nature. Since then he had married, made money and inherited more, ‘raised,’ as Americans called it, a family—all, except his daughter Agatha, out in the world—had been widowed, and developed old man’s cough. He and Agatha now left The Cedars, their country house in Hertfordshire, for the Riviera, with the annual regularity of swallows. Usually they stayed at Nice or Cannes, but this year, because a friend of Agatha’s was the wife of the English chaplain, they had chosen Monte Carlo.
It was near the end of their stay, and the April sun hot.
Trevillian passed a thin hand down his thin,brown, hairy face, where bushy eyebrows were still dark but the pointed beard white, and the effect, under a rather wide-brimmed brown hat, almost too Spanish for an English bank director. He was fond of saying that some of the best Cornish families had Spanish blood in their veins; whether Iberian or Armadesque he did not specify. The theory in any case went well with his formalism, growing more formal every year.
Agatha having stayed in with a cold, he had been to service by himself. A poor gathering! The English out here were a rackety lot. Among the congregation to whom he had that morning read the lessons he had noted, for instance, that old blackguard Telford, who had run off with two men’s wives in his time, and was now living with a Frenchwoman, they said. What on earth washedoing in church? And that ostracised couple, the Gaddenhams, who had the villa near Roquebrune? She used his name, but they had never been married, for Gaddenham’s wife was still alive. And, more seriously, had he observed Mrs. Rolfe, who before the war used to come with her husband—now in India—to The Cedars to shoot the coverts in November. Young Lord Chesherford was hanging about her, they said. That would end in scandal to a certainty. Never without uneasiness did hesee that woman, with whom his daughter was on terms of some intimacy. Grass widows were dangerous, especially in a place like this. He must give Agatha a hint. Such doubtful people, he felt, had no business to attend Divine service; yet it was difficult to disapprove of people coming to church, and, after all, most of them did not! A man of the world, however strong a churchman, could, of course, rub shoulders with anyone, but it was different when they came near one’s womenfolk or into the halls of one’s formal beliefs. To encroach like that showed no sense of the fitness of things. He must certainly speak to Agatha.
The road had lain uphill, and he took breaths of the mimosa-scented air, carefully regulating them so as not to provoke his cough. He was about to proceed on his way when a piano-organ across the road burst into tune. The man who turned the handle was the usual moustachioed Italian with restive eyes and a game leg; the animal who drew it the customary little grey donkey; the singer the proverbial dark girl with an orange head-kerchief; the song she sang the immemorial ‘Santa Lucia.’ Her brassy voice blared out the full metallic ‘a’s,’ which seemed to hit the air as hammers hit the wires of a czymbal. Trevillian had some music in his soul; he often started out for the Casino concert,though he generally arrived in the playing-rooms, not, indeed, to adventure more than a five-franc piece or two, for he disapproved of gambling, but because their motley irregularity titillated his formalism, made him feel like a boy a little out of school. He could distinguish, however, between several tunes, and knew this to be neither ‘God Save the King,’ ‘Rule Britannia,’ ‘Tipperary,’ nor ‘Funiculi-Funicula.’ Indeed, it had to him a kind of separate ring, a resonance oddly intimate, as if in some other life it had been the beating, the hammering rhythm of his heart. Queer sensation—quite a queer sensation! And he stood, blinking. Of course, he knew that tune now that he heard the words—Santa Lucia; but in what previous existence had its miauling awakened something deep, hot, almost savage within him, sweet and luring like a strange fruit or the scent of a tropical flower? ‘San-ta Luci-i-a! San-ta Luci-i-a!’ Lost! And yet so close to the fingers of his recollection that they itched! The girl stopped singing and came across to him—a gaudy baggage, with her orange scarf, her beads, the whites of her eyes, and all those teeth! These Latins, emotional, vibrant, light-hearted and probably light-fingered—an inferior race! He felt in his pocket, produced a franc, and moved on slowly.
But at the next bend in the road he halted again. The girl had recommenced, in gratitude for his franc—‘Santa Luci-ia!’ What was it buried in him under the fallen leaves of years and years?
The pink clusters of a pepper-tree dropped from behind a low garden wall right over him while he stood there. The air tingled with its faint savourous perfume, true essence of the South. And again that conviction of a previous existence, of something sweet, burning, poignant, caught him in the Adam’s apple veiled by his beard. Was it something he had dreamed? Was that the matter with him now—while the organ wailed, the girl’s song vibrated? Trevillian’s stare lighted on the prickly pears and aloes above the low, pink wall. The savagery of those plants jerked his mind forward almost to the pitch of—what? A youth passed, smoking a maize-coloured cigarette, leaving a perfume of Latakia, that tobacco of his own youth when he, too, smoked cigarettes made of its black, strong, fragrant threads. He gazed blankly at the half-obliterated name on the dilapidated garden gate, and spelled it aloud: “V lla Be u S te. Villa Beau Site! Beau——! By God! I’ve got it!”
At the unbecoming vigour of his ejaculation a smile of release, wrinkling round his eyes, furrowedhis thin brown cheeks. He went up to the gate. What a coincidence! The very——! He stood staring into a tangled garden through the fog of forty-five years, resting his large prayer-book with its big print on the top rail of the old green gate; then, looking up and down the road like a boy about to steal cherries, he lifted the latch and passed in.
Nobody lived here now, he should say. The old pink villa, glimpsed some sixty yards away at the end of that little wilderness, was shuttered, and its paint seemed peeling off. Beau Site! Thatwasthe name! And this the gate he had been wont to use into this lower garden, invisible from the house. And—yes—here was the little fountain, broken and discoloured now, with the same gargoyle face, and water still dripping from its mouth. And here—the old stone seat his cloak had so often covered. Grown over now, all of it; unpruned the lilacs, mimosas, palms, making that dry rustling when the breeze crept into them. He opened his prayer-book, laid it on the seat, and carefully sat down—he never sat on unprotected stone. He had passed into another world, screened from any eye by the overgrown shrubs and tangled foliage. And, slowly, while he sat there the frost of nearly half a century thawed.
Yes! Little by little, avidly, yet as it were unwillingly, he remembered—sitting on his prayer-book, out of the sun, under the flowering tangled trees.
He had been twenty-six, just after he went into the family bank—he recollected—such a very sucking partner. A neglected cold had given him the first of those bronchial attacks of which he was now reaping the aftermath. Those were the days when, in the chill of a London winter, he would, dandy-like, wear thin underclothes and no overcoat. Still coughing at Easter, he had taken three weeks off and a ticket to Mentone. A cousin of his was engaged to a Russian girl whose family had a villa there, and he had pitched his tent in a little hotel almost next door. The Russians ofthatday were the Russians of the Turgenev novels, which Agatha had made him read. A simple, trilingual family of gentlefolk, the Rostakovs—father, mother, and two daughters. What was it they had calledhim—Philip Philipovitch? Monsieur Rostakov with his beard, his witty French stories, imperfectly understood by young Trevillian, his zest for food and drink, his thick lips, and, as they said, his easy morals—quite a dog in his way! And Madame,néePrincesse Nogárin (a Tartar strain in her, his cousin said), ‘spirituelle,’ somewhat worn out byMonsieur Rostakov and her belief in the transmigration of souls. And Varvara, the eldest daughter, the one engaged; only seventeen, with deep-grey, truthful eyes, a broad, grave face, dark hair, and a candour, by George! which had almost frightened him. And the little one, Katrina, blue-eyed, snub-nosed, fair-haired, with laughing lips, yet very serious too; charming little creature, whose death from typhoid three years later had given him quite a shock. Delightful family, seen through the mists of time. And now in all the world you couldn’t find a Russian family like that. Gone! Vanished from the face of the earth! Their estates had been—ah!—somewhere in South Russia, and a house near Yalta. Cosmopolitan, yet very Russian, with theirsamovarand theirzakouskas—a word he had never learned to spell—and Rostakov’s little glasses of white vodka, and those caviare sandwiches that the girls and he used to take on their picnics to Gorbio and Castellar and Belle Enda, riding donkeys, and chaperoned by that amiable young German lady, their governess.... Germans in those days—how different they were! How different the whole of life! The girls riding in their wide skirts, under parasols, the air unspoiled by the fumes of petrol, the carriages with their jangling-belled little horses and bright harness;priests in black; soldiers in bright trousers and yellow shakoes; and beggars—plenty. The girls would gather wild flowers and press them afterwards; and in the evening Varvara would look at him with her grave eyes and ask him whether he believed in a future life. He had no beliefs to speak of then, if he remembered rightly; they had come with increasing income, family, and business responsibilities. It had always seemed to hurt her that he thought of sport and dress, and not of his soul. The Russians in those days seemed so tremendously concerned about the soul—an excellent thing, of course, but not what one talked of. Still, that first fortnight had been quite idyllic. He remembered one Sunday afternoon—queer how such a little thing could stay in the mind!—on the beach near Cap Martin flicking sand off his boots with his handkerchief and Varvara saying: “And then to your face again, Philip Philipovitch?” She was always saying things which made him feel uncomfortable. And in the little letter which Katrina wrote him a year later, with blue forget-me-nots all about the paper, she had reminded him of how he had blushed. Charming young girls—simple—no such nowadays! The dew was off. They had thought Monte Carlo a vulgar place. What would they think of it now, by Jove! Even Rostakovonly went there on the quiet—aviveurthat fellow, who would always be living a double life. Trevillian recollected how, under the spell of that idyllic atmosphere, and afraid of Varvara’s eyes, he himself had put off from day to day his visit to the celebrated haunt, until one evening when Madame Rostakov hadmigraineand the girls were at a party he had sauntered to the station and embarked on a Monte Carlo train. How clearly it came back to him—the winding path up through the Gardens, a beautiful still evening, scented and warm, the Casino orchestra playing the Love music from ‘Faust,’ the one opera that he knew well. The darkness, strange with exotic foliage, glimmering with golden lamps—none of this glaring white electric light—had deeply impressed him, who, for all his youthful dandyism, had Puritanism in his blood and training. It was like going up to—well, not precisely heaven. And in his white beard old Trevillian uttered a slight cackle. Anyway, he had entered ‘the rooms’ with a beating heart. He had no money to throw away in those days; by Jove, no! His father had kept him strictly to an allowance of four hundred a year, and his partnership was still in the apprentice stage. He had only some ten or twenty pounds to spare. But to go back to England and have his fellows say,“What? Monte Carlo, and never played?” was not to be thought of.
His first sensation in ‘the rooms’ was disappointing. The decorations were florid, the people foreign, queer, ugly! For some time he stood still listening to the chink of rake against coin, and the nasal twang of the croupiers’ voices. Then he had gone up to a table to watch the game, which he had never played. That, at all events, was the same as now; that and the expression on the gamblers’ faces—the sharp, blind, crab-like absorption like no other human expression. And what a lot of old women! A nervous excitement had crept into his brain while he stood there, an itch into his fingers. But he was shy. All these people played with such deadly calm, seemed so utterly familiar with it all. At last he had reached over the shoulder of a dark-haired woman sitting in front of him, put down a five-franc piece, and called out the word ‘Vingt.’ A rake shovelled it forward on to the number with an indifferent click. The ball rolled. “Quatorze, rouge pair et manque.” His five-franc piece was raked away. But he, Philip Trevillian, had gambled at Monte Carlo, and at once he had seemed to see Varvara’s eyes with something of amusement in their candour, and to hear her voice: “But to gamble! How silly, PhilipPhilipovitch!” Then the man sitting to his left got up, and he had slipped down into the empty chair. Once seated, he knew that he must play. So he pushed another five-franc piece on to black and received its counterpart. Now he was quits; and, continuing that simple stake with varying success, he began taking in the faces of his neighbours. On his left he had an old Englishman in evening dress, ruddy, with chubby lips, who played in gold pieces and seemed winning rather heavily. Opposite, in a fabulous shawl, a bird-like old woman, with a hook nose, and a man who looked like a Greek bandit in a frock-coat. To his right was the dark-haired woman over whose shoulder he had leaned. An agreeable perfume, as of jasmine blossoms, floated from her. She had some tablets and six or seven gold pieces before her, but seemed to have stopped playing. Out of the tail of his eye Trevillian scrutinised her profile. She was by far the most attractive woman he had seen in here. And he felt suddenly uninterested in the fate of his five-franc pieces. Under the thin, dark brows, a little drawn down, he could see that her eyes were dark and velvety. Her face was rather pointed, delicate, faintly powdered in the foreign fashion. She wore a low dress, but with a black lace scarf thrown over hergleaming shoulders, and something that glimmered in her dark hair. She was not English, but what he could not tell. He won twice running on black, left his stake untouched, and was conscious that she pushed one of her own gold pieces on to black. Again black won. Again he left his stake, and she hers. To be linked with her by that following of his luck was agreeable to young Trevillian. The devil might care—he would leave his winnings down. Again and again, till he had won eight times on black, he left his stake, and his neighbour followed suit. A pile of gold was mounting in front of each of them. The eyes of the hawk-like old woman opposite, like those of a crustacean in some book of natural history, seemed pushed out from her face; a little hard smile on her thin lips seemed saying, ‘Wait; it will all go back!’ The jasmine perfume from his neighbour grew stronger, as though disengaged by increasing emotion; he could see her white neck heave under its black lace. She reached her hand out as though to gather in her winnings. In bravado Trevillian sat unmoving. Her eyes slid round to his; she withdrew her hand. The little ball rolled. Black! He heard her sigh of relief. She touched his arm. “Retirez!” she whispered, “Retirez, monsieur!” and, sweeping in her winnings, she got up.Trevillian hesitated just a moment, then with the thought, ‘If I stay I lose sight of her,’ he, too, reached out, and, gathering in his pile, left the table. Starting with a five-franc piece, in nine successful coups he had won just over a hundred pounds. His neighbour, who had started with a louis, in seven coups—he calculated rapidly—must have won the same. “Seize, rouge pair et manque!” Just in time! Elated, Trevillian turned away. There was the graceful figure of his dark neighbour threading the throng, and without deliberate intention, yet longing not to lose sight of her, he followed. A check in her progress brought him so close, however, that he was at infinite pains to seem unconscious. She turned and saw him. “Ah!Merci, monsieur!I tank you moch.” “It’s for me to thank you!” he stammered. The dark lady smiled. “I have the instinct,” she said in her broken English, “for others, not for myself. I am unlucky. It is the first time you play, sare? I tought so. Do not play again. Give me that promise; it will make me ’appy.”
Her eyes were looking into his. Never in his life had he seen anything so fascinating as her face with its slightly teasing smile, her figure in the lacy black dress swinging out Spanish fashionfrom the hips, and the scarf flung about her shoulders. He had made the speech then which afterwards seemed to him so foreign.
“Charmed to promise anything that will make you happy, madame.”
She clasped her hands like a pleased child.
“That is a bargain; now I have repaid you.”
“May I find your carriage?”
“I am walkin’, monsieur.”
With desperate courage he had murmured:
“Then may I escort you?”
“But certainly.”
Sitting on his prayer-book, Trevillian burrowed into the past. What had he felt, thought, fancied, in those moments while she had gone to get her cloak? Who and what was she? Into what whirlpool drawing him? How nearly he had bolted—back to the idyllic, to Varvara’s searching candour and Katrina’s laughing innocence, before she was there beside him, lace veiling her hair, face, eyes, like an Eastern woman, and her fingers had slipped under his sleeve.... What a walk! What sense of stepping into the unknown; strange intimacy and perfect ignorance! Perhaps every man had some such moment in his life—of pure romance, of adventuring at all and any cost. He had restrained the impulse to press that slenderhand closely to his side, had struggled to preserve the perfect delicacy worthy of the touching confidence of so beautiful a lady. Italian, Spanish, Polish, Bohemian? Married, widowed? She told him nothing; he asked no questions. Instinct or shyness kept him dumb, but with a whirling brain. And the night above them had seemed the starriest ever seen, the sweetest scented, the most abandoned by all except himself and her. They had come to the gate of this very garden, and, opening it, she had said:
“Here is my home. You have been perfect for me, monsieur.”
Her lightly resting fingers were withdrawn. Trevillian remembered, with a sort of wonder, how he had kissed those fingers.
“I am always at your service, madame.”
Her lips had parted; her eyes had an arch sweetness he had never seen before or since in woman.
“Every night I play.Au revoir!”
He had listened to her footsteps on the path, watched lights go up in the house which looked so empty now behind him, watched them put out again, and, retracing his steps, had learned by heart their walk from the Casino, till he was sure he could not miss his way to that garden gate byday or night.... A fluster of breeze came into the jungle where he sat, and released the dry rustle of the palm-tree leaves. “On fait des folies!” as the French put it. Loose lot, the French! Queer what young men would go through when they were ‘making madnesses.’ And, plucking a bit of lilac, old Trevillian put it to his nose, as though seeking explanation for the madnesses of youth. What had he been like then? Thin as a lath, sunburnt—he used to pride himself on being sunburnt—a little black moustache, a dandy about clothes. The memory of his youthful looks warmed him, sitting there, chilly from old age....
“On fait des folies!” All next day he had been restless, uneasy, at the Villa Rosakov under the question in Varvara’s eyes, and Lord knew what excuse he had made for not going there that evening! Ah! And what of his solemn resolutions to find out all about his dark lady, not to run his head into some foreign noose, not to compromise her or himself? They had all gone out of his head the moment he set eyes on her again, and he had never learned anything but her name—Iñez—in all those three weeks, nor told anything of himself, as if both had felt that knowledge must destroy romance. When had he knownhimself of interest to her—the second night, the third? The look in her eyes! The pressure of her arm against his own! On this very seat, with his cloak spread to guard her from the chill, he had whispered his turbulent avowals. Not free! No such woman could be free. What did it matter? Disinheritance—ostracism—exile! All such considerations had burned like straws in the fire he had felt, sitting by her in the darkness, his arm about her, her shoulder pressed to his. With mournful mockery she had gazed at him, kissed his forehead, slipped away up the dark garden. God, what a night after that! Wandering up and down along by the sea—devoured. Funny to look back on—deuced funny! A woman’s face to have such power. And with a little shock he remembered that never in all the few weeks of that mad business had he seen her face by daylight! Of course, he had left Mentone at once—no offering his madness up to the candid eyes of those two girls, to the cynical stare of that oldviveurRostakov. But no going home, though his leave was up; he was his own master yet awhile, thanks to his winnings. And then—the deluge. Literally—a night when the rain came down in torrents, drenching him through cape and clothes while he stood waiting for her. It was after that drenchingnight which had kept them apart that she had returned his passion.... A wild young devil! The madness of those nights beneath these trees by the old fountain! How he used to sit waiting on this bench in the darkness with heart fluttering, trembling, aching with expectancy!... Gad, how he had ached and fluttered on that seat! What fools young men could be! And yet in all his life had there been weeks so wildly sweet as those? Weeks the madness of which could stir in him still this strange youthful warmth. Rubbing his veined, thin hands together, he held them out into a streak of sunlight and closed his eyes.... There, coming through the gate into the deeper shadow, dark in her black dress—always black—the gleam of her neck when she bent and pressed his head to it! Through the rustling palm-leaves the extinct murmuring of their two voices, the beating of their two hearts.... Madness indeed! His back gave a little crick. He had been very free from lumbago lately. Confound it—a premonitory twinge! Close to his feet a lizard rustled out into the patch of sunlight, motionless but for tongue and eyes, looked at him with head to one side—queer, quick, dried-looking little object!... And then—the end! What a Jezebel of cruelty he had thought her! Now he could see its wisdom andits mercy. By George! She had blown their wild weeks out like a candle-flame! Vanished! Vanished into the unknown as she had come from the unknown; left him to go, haggard and burnt-up, back to England and bank routine, to the social and moral solidity of a pillar of society....
Like that lizard whisking its tail and vanishing beneath the dead dry leaves, so she had vanished—as if into the earth. Could she ever have felt for him as he for her? Did women ever know such consuming fires? Trevillian shrugged his thin shoulders. She had seemed to; but—how tell? Queer cattle—women!
Two nights he had sat here, waiting, sick with anxiety and longing. A third day he had watched outside the villa, closed, shuttered, abandoned; not a sound from it, not a living thing, but one white-and-yellow cat. He pitied himself even now, thinking of that last vigil. For three days more he had hung around, haunting Casino, garden, villa. No sign! No sign!...
Trevillian rose; his back had given him another twinge. He examined the seat and his open prayer-book. Had he overlapped it, on to damp stone? He frowned, smoothing superstitiously the pages a little creased and over-flattened by his weight. Closing the book, he went towards thegate. Had those passionate hours been the best or the worst of his life? He did not know.
He moved out into the hot sunshine and up the road. Round the corner he came suddenly abreast of the old villa. ‘It was here I stood,’ he thought; ‘just here!’ What was that caterwauling? Ah! The girl and the organ—there they were again! What! Why, of course! That long-ago morning a barrel organ had come while he stood there in despair. He could see it still, grinding away, with a monkey on it, and a woman singing that same silly tune. With a dry, dusty feeling he turned and walked on. What had he been thinking of before? Oh, ah! The Rolfe woman and that young fool Chesherford. Yes, he would certainly warn Agatha, certainly warn her. They were a loose lot out here!
1921.
The affectionate if rather mocking friend who had said of Charles Granter, “He isn’t a man, he’s an edifice,” seemed justified to the thin dark man following him down Oakley Street, Chelsea, that early October afternoon. From the square foundations of his feet to his square fair beard and the top of his head under a square black bowler, he looked solid as granite, indestructible—too big to be taken by the board—only fit to be submarined. And the man dodging in his wake right down to the Embankment ran up once or twice under his counter and fell behind again as if appalled by the vessel’s size and unconsciousness. Considering the heat of the past summer the plane-trees were still very green, and few of their twittering leaves had dropped or turned yellow—just enough to confirm the glamorous melancholy of early fall. Granter, though he lived with his wife in some mansions close by, went out of his way to pass under those trees and look at the river. This seeming sign of weakness, perhaps, determined theshadowy man to dodge up again and become stationary close behind. Ravaged and streaked, as if he had lived submerged, he stood carefully noting with his darting dark eyes that they were quite alone; then, swallowing violently so that the strings of his lean neck writhed, he moved stealthily up beside Granter, and said in a hurried, hoarse voice: “Beg pardon, mister—ten pound, and I’ll say nothin’.”
The face which Granter turned toward that surprising utterance was a good illustration of the saying ‘things are not what they seem.’ Above that big building of a body it quivered, ridiculously alive and complex, as of a man full of nerves, humours, sarcasms; and a deep continuous chinking sound arose—of Charles Granter jingling coins in his trousers’ pocket. The quiver settled into raised eyebrows, into crow’s-feet running out on to the broad cheekbones, into a sarcastic smile drooping the corners of the lips between moustache and beard. He said in his rather high voice:
“What’s the matter with you, my friend?”
“There’s a lot the matter with me, mister. Down and out I am. I know where you live, I know your lady; but—ten pound and I’ll say nothin’.”
“About what?”
“About your visiting that gell, where you’ve just come from. Ten pound. It’s cheap—I’m a man of me word.”
With lips still sarcastically drooped, Granter made a little derisive sound. “Blackmail, by George!”
“Guv’nor—I’m desperate, I mean to have that ten pound. You give it me here at six o’clock this evenin’, if you ’aven’t got it on you.” His eyes flared suddenly in his hungry face. “But no tricks! I ain’t killed Huns for nothin’.”
Granter surveyed him for a moment, then turned his back and looked at the water.
“Well, you’ve got two hours to get it in—six o’clock, mister, just here; and no tricks—I warn you.”
The hoarse voice ceased, the sound of footsteps died away; Granter was alone. The smile still clung to his lips, but he was not amused; he was annoyed with the measured indignation of a big man highly civilised and innocent. Where had this ruffian sprung from? To be spied on, without knowing it, like this! His ears grew red. The damned scoundrel!
The thing was too absurd to pay attention to. But, instantly, his highly-sophisticated consciousness began to pay it attention. How many visits had he made to this distressed flower-girl? Three?And all because he didn’t like handing over the case to that society which always found out the worst. They said private charity was dangerous. Apparently it was! Blackmail! A consideration came, perching like a crow on the branches of his mind: Why hadn’t he mentioned the flower-girl to his wife and madeherdo the visiting? Why! Because Olga would have said the girl was a fraud. And perhaps she was! A put-up job! Would the scoundrel have ventured on this threat at all if the girl were not behind him? She might support him with lies! His wife might believe them—she—she had such a vein of cynicism! How sordid, how domestically unpleasant!
Granter felt quite sick. Every decent human value seemed suddenly in question. And a second crow came croaking: Could one leave a scoundrel like this to play his tricks with impunity? Oughtn’t one to go to the police? He stood extraordinarily still—a dappled leaf dropped from a plane-tree and lodged on his bowler hat; at the other end of him a little dog mistook him for a lamp-post. This was no joke! For a man with a reputation for humanity, integrity and common sense—no joke at all! A police court meant the prosecution of a fellow-creature; getting him perhaps a year’s imprisonment, when one had always felt thatpunishment practically never fitted crime! Staring at the river he seemed to see cruelty hovering over himself, his wife, society, the flower-girl, even over that scoundrel—naked cruelty, waiting to pounce on one or all. Which ever way one turned the thing was dirty, cruel. No wonder blackmail was accounted such a heinous crime. No other human act was so cold-blooded, spider-like, and slimy; none plunged so deadly a dagger into the bowels of compassion, so eviscerated humanity, so murdered faith! And it would have been even worse, if his conscience had not been clear. But was it so extremely clear? Would he have taken the trouble to go to that flower-girl’s dwelling, not once but three times, unless she had been attractive, unless her dark-brown eyes had been pretty, and her common voice so soft? Would he have visited the blowsy old flower-woman at that other corner, in circumstances, no doubt, just as strenuous? Honestly: No. Still, if he did like a pretty face he was not vicious—he was fastidious and detested subterfuge. But then Olga was so cynical, she would certainly ask him why he hadn’t visited the old flower-woman as well, and the lame man who sold matches, and all the other stray unfortunates of the neighbourhood.Well, there it was; and a bold course always the best! Thebold course—which was it? To go to the police? To his wife? To that girl, and find out if she were in this ramp? To wait till six o’clock, meet the ruffian and shake the teeth out of him? Granter could not decide. All seemed equally bold—would do equally well. And a fifth course presented itself which seemed even bolder: Ignore the thing!
The tide had just turned, and the full waters below him were very still, of a sunlit soft grey colour. This stillness of the river restored to Charles Granter something of the impersonal mood in which he had crossed the Embankment to look at it. Here, by the mother stream of this great town, was he, tall, strong, well-fed, and, if not rich, quite comfortable; and here, too, were hundreds of thousands like that needy flower-girl and this shadowy scoundrel skating on the edge of destitution. And here was this water—to him a source of æsthetic enjoyment; to them—a possible last refuge. The girl had talked of it—beggar’s patter, perhaps, like the blackmailer’s words: “I’m desperate—I’m down and out.”
One wanted to be just! If he had known all about them—but he knew nothing!
‘Can’t believe she’s such an ungrateful little wretch!’ he thought; ‘I’ll go back and see her.’
He retraced his way up Oakley Street to themews which she inhabited, and ascended a stairway scented with petrol. Through the open doorway he could see her baby, of doubtful authorship, seated in an empty flower-basket—a yellow baby, who stared up at him with the placidity of one recently fed. That stare seemed to Granter to be saying: ‘You look out that you’re not taken for my author. Have you got an alibi, old man?’ And almost unconsciously he began to calculate where he had been about fourteen or fifteen months ago. Not in London—thank goodness! In Brittany with his wife—all that July, August, and September. Jingling his money, he contemplated the baby. It seemed more, but itmightbe only four months old! The baby opened a toothless mouth, “Ga” it said, and stretched out a tiny hand. Granter ceased to jingle the coins and gazed round the room. The first time he came, a month ago, to test her street-corner story, its condition had been deplorable. His theory that people were never better than their environments had prompted the second visit, and that of this afternoon. He had wanted to know that he was not throwing away his money. And there certainly was some appearance of comfort now in a room so small that he and the baby and a bed almost filled it. But he felt a fool for ever having come there even withthose best intentions which were the devil. And, turning to go, he saw the girl herself ascending the stairs, a paper bag in her hand, an evident bull’s-eye in her mouth, for a scent of peppermint preceded her. Surely her cheekbones were higher than he had thought, her eyebrows more oblique—a gipsy look! Her eyes, dark and lustrous as a hound puppy’s, smiled at him, and he said in his rather high voice:
“I came back to ask you something.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know a dark man with a thin face and a slight squint, who’s been in the Army?”
“What’s his name, sir?”
“I don’t know; but he followed me from here, and tried to blackmail me on the Embankment. You know what blackmail is?”
“No, sir.”
Feline, swift, furtive, she had passed him and taken up her baby, slanting her dark glance at him from behind it. Granter experienced a very queer sensation. Really it was as if—though he disliked poetic emphasis—as if he had suddenly seen something pre-civilised, pre-human, snake-like, cat-like, monkey-like too, in those dark sliding eyes and that yellow baby. She was in it; or, if not in it, she knew of it!
“A dangerous game, that,” he said. “Tell him—for his own good—he had better drop it.”
And, while he went, very square, downstairs, he thought: ‘This is one of the finest opportunities you ever had for getting to the bottom of human nature, and you’re running away from it.’ So strongly did this thought obsess him that he halted, in two minds, outside. A chauffeur, who was cleaning his car, looked at him curiously. Charles Granter moved away.
When he reached the little drawing-room of their flat his wife was making tea. She was rather short, with a good figure, and brown eyes in a flattish face, powdered and by no means unattractive. She had Slav blood in her—Polish; and Granter never now confided to her the finer shades of his thoughts and conduct because she had long made him feel himself her superior in moral sensibility. He had no wish to feel superior—it was often very awkward; but he could not help it. In view of this attempt at blackmail, more than awkward. It was extraordinarily unpleasant to fall from a pedestal on which he did not wish to be.
He sat down, very large, in a lacquered chairwith black cushions, spoke of the leaves turning, saw her look at him and smile, and felt that she knew he was disturbed.
“Do you ever wonder,” he said, tinkling his teaspoon, “about the lives that other people live?”
“What sort of people, Charles?”
“Oh—not our sort; match-sellers, don’t you know, flower-sellers, people down and out?”
“No, I don’t think I do.”
If only he could tell her of this monstrous incident without slipping from his pedestal!
“It interests me enormously; there are such queer depths to reach, don’t you know.”
Her smile seemed to answer: ‘You don’t reach the depths in me.’ And it was true. She was very Slav, with the warm gleam in her eyes and the opaque powdered skin of her comely face. An enigma—flatly an enigma! There were deep waters below the pedestal, like—like Philæ, with columns still standing in the middle of the Nile Dam. Absurd thought!
“I’ve often wondered,” he said, “how I should feel if I were down and out.”
“You’re too large, Charles, and too dignified, my dear; you’d be on the Civil List before you could turn round.”
Granter rose from the lacquered chair, jinglinghis coins. The most vivid pictures at that moment were, like a film, unrolled before his mind—of the grey sunlit river and that accosting blackguard with his twisted murky face and lips uttering hoarse sounds; of the yellow baby, and the girl’s gipsy-dark glance from behind it; of a police court, and himself standing there and letting the whole cartload of the law fall on them. He said suddenly:
“I was blackmailed this afternoon on the Embankment.”
She did not answer; and, turning with irritation, he saw that her fingers were in her ears.
“I do wish you wouldn’t jingle your money so!” she said.
Confound it! She had not heard him.
“I’ve had an adventure,” he began again. “You know the flower-girl who stands at that corner in Tite Street?”
“Yes; a gipsy baggage.”
“H’m! Well, I bought a flower from her one day, and she told me such a pathetic story that I went to her den to see if it was true. It seemed to be, so I gave her some money, don’t you know. Then I thought I’d better see how she was spending it, so I went to see her again, don’t you know.”
A faint “Oh! Charles!” caused him to hurry on.
“And—what do you think—a blackguard followed me to-day and tried to blackmail me for ten pounds on the Embankment.”
A sound brought his face round to attention. His wife was lying back on the cushions of her chair in paroxysms of soft laughter.
It was clear to Granter, then, that what he had really been afraid of was just this. His wife would laugh at him—laugh at him slipping from the pedestal! Yes! It was that he had dreaded—not any disbelief in his fidelity. Somehow he felt too large to be laughed at. Hewastoo large! Nature had set a size beyond which husbands——!
“I don’t see what there is to laugh at,” he said frigidly. “There’s no more odious crime than blackmail.”
His wife was silent; tears were trickling down her cheeks.
“Did you give it him?” she said in a strangled voice.
“Of course not.”
“What was he threatening?”
“To tell you.”
“But what?”
“His beastly interpretation of my harmless visits.”
The tears had made runlets in her powder, andhe added viciously: “He doesn’t know you, of course.”
His wife dabbed her eyes, and a scent of geranium arose.
“It seems to me,” said Granter, “that you’d be even more amused if thereweresomething in it!”
“Oh, no, Charles, but—perhaps there is.”
Granter looked at her fixedly.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, there is not.”
He saw her cover her lips with that rag of handkerchief, and abruptly left the room.
He went into his study and sat down before the fire. So it was funny to be a faithful husband? And suddenly he thought: ‘If my wife can treat this as a joke, what—what about herself?’ A nasty thought! An unconscionable thought! Really, it was as though that blackmailing scoundrel had dirtied human nature till it seemed to function only from low motives. A church clock chimed. Six already! The ruffian would be back there on the Embankment waiting for his ten pounds. Granter rose. His duty was to go out and hand him over to the police.
‘No!’ he thought viciously, ‘let him come here! I’d very much like him to come here. I’d teach him!’
But a sort of shame beset him. Like most very big men, he was quite unaccustomed to violence—had never struck a violent blow in his life, not even in his school-days—had never had occasion to. He went across to the window. From there he could just see the Embankment parapet through the trees in the failing light, and presently—sure enough—he made out the fellow’s figure slinking up and down like a hungry dog. He stood watching, jingling his money—nervous, sarcastic, angry, very interested. What would the rascal do now? Would he beard this great block of flats? And was the girl down there too—the girl, with her yellow baby? He saw the slinking figure cross from the far side and vanish under the loom of the mansions. In that interesting moment Granter burst through the bottom of one of his trousers’ pockets; several coins jingled on to the floor and rolled away. He was still looking for the last when he heard the door-bell ring—he had never really believed the ruffian would come up! Straightening himself abruptly, he went out into the hall. Service was performed by the mansion’s staff, so there was no one in the flat but himself and his wife. The bell rang again; and she, too, appeared.
“This is my Embankment friend, no doubt, who amuses you so much. I should like you to seehim,” he said grimly. He noted a quizzical apology on her face and opened the hall door.
Yes! there stood the man! By electric light, in upholstered surroundings, more ‘down and out’ than ever. A bad lot, but a miserable poor wretch, with his broken boots, his thin, twisted, twitching face, his pinched shabby figure—only his hungry eyes looked dangerous.
“Come in,” said Granter. “You want to see my wife, I think.”
The man recoiled.
“I don’t want to see ’er,” he muttered, “unless you force me to. Give usfivepound, guv’nor, and I won’t worry you again. I don’t want to cause trouble between man and wife.”
“Come in,” repeated Granter; “she’s expecting you.”
The man stood, silently passing a pale tongue over a pale upper lip, as though conjuring some new resolution from his embarrassment.
“Now, see ’ere, mister,” he said suddenly, “you’ll regret it if I come in—you will, straight.”
“I shall regret it if you don’t. You’re a very interesting fellow, and an awful scoundrel.”
“Well, who made me one?” the man burst out; “you answer me that.”
“Are you coming in?”
“Yes, I am.”
He came, and Granter shut the door behind him. It was like inviting a snake or a mad dog into one’s parlour; but the memory of having been laughed at was so fresh within him that he rather welcomed the sensation.
“Now,” he said, “have the kindness!” and opened the drawing-room door.
The man slunk in, blinking in the stronger light.
Granter went towards his wife, who was standing before the fire.
“This gentleman has an important communication to make to you, it seems.”
The expression of her face struck him as peculiar—surely she was not frightened! And he experienced a kind of pleasure in seeing them both look so exquisitely uncomfortable.
“Well,” he said ironically, “perhaps you’d like me not to listen.” And, going back to the door, he stood leaning against it with his hands up to his ears. He saw the fellow give him a furtive look and go nearer to her; his lips moved rapidly, hers answered, and he thought: ‘What on earth am I covering my ears for?’ He took his hands away, and the man turned round.
“I’m goin’ now, mister; a little mistake—sorry to ’ave troubled you.”
His wife had turned to the fire again; and with a puzzled feeling Granter opened the door. As the fellow passed he took him by the arm, twisted him round into the study, and, locking the door, put the key into his pocket.
“Now then,” he said, “you precious scoundrel!”
The man shifted on his broken boots. “Don’t you hit me, guv’nor, I got a knife here.”
“I’m not going to hit you. I’m going to hand you over to the police.”
The man’s eyes roved, looking for a way of escape; then rested, as if fascinated, on the glowing hearth.
“What’s ten pounds?” he said suddenly; “you’d never ha’ missed it.”
Granter smiled.
“You don’t seem to realise, my friend, that blackmail is the most devilish crime a man can commit.” And he crossed over to the telephone.
The man’s eyes, dark, restless, violent, and yet hungry, began to shift up and down the building of a man before him.
“No,” he said suddenly, with a sort of pathos, “don’t do that, guv’nor!”
The look of his eyes, or the tone of his voice, affected Granter.
“But if I don’t,” he said slowly, “you’ll beblackmailing the next person you meet. You’re as dangerous as a viper.”
The man’s lips quivered; he covered them with his hand, and said from behind it:
“I’m a man like yourself. I’m down and out—that’s all. Look at me!”
Granter’s glance dwelt on the trembling hand. “Yes, but you fellows destroy all belief in human nature,” he said vehemently.
“See ’ere, guv’nor; you try livin’ like me—you try it! My Gawd! You try my life these last six months—cadgin’ and crawlin’ for a job!” He made a deep sound. “A man ’oo’s done ’is bit, too. Wot life is it? A stinkin’ life, not fit for a dawg, let alone a ’uman bein’. An’ when I see a great big chap like you, beggin’ your pardon, mister, well fed, with everything to ’is ’and—it was regular askin’ for it. It come over me, it did.”
“No, no,” said Granter grimly; “that won’t do. It couldn’t have been sudden. You calculated—you concocted this. Blackmail is sheer filthy cold-blooded blackguardism. You don’t care two straws whom you hurt, whose lives you wreck, what faiths you destroy.” And he put his hand on the receiver.
The man squirmed.
“Steady on, guv’nor! I’ve gotta find food. I’vegotta find clothes. I can’t live on air. I can’t go naked.”
Granter stood motionless, while the man’s voice continued to travel to him across the cosy room.
“Give us a chawnce, guv’nor! Ah! give us a chawnce! You can’t understand my temptations. Don’t have the police to me. I won’t do this again—give you me word—so ’elp me! I’ve got it in the neck. Let me go, guv’nor!”
In Granter, motionless as the flats he lived in, a heavy struggle was in progress—not between duty and pity, but between revengeful anger and a sort of horror at using the strength of prosperity against so broken a wretch.
“Let me go, mister!” came the hoarse voice again. “Be a sport!”
Granter dropped the receiver and unlocked the door.
“All right; you can go.”
The man crossed swiftly.
“Christ!” he said; “good luck! And as to the lady—I take it back. I never see ’er. It’s all me eye.”
He was across the hall and gone before Granter could decide what to say; the scurrying shuffle of his footsteps down the stairs died away. ‘And as to the lady—I take it back. I never see ’er. It’sall me eye!’ Good God! The scoundrel, having failed with him, had been trying to blackmail his wife—his wife, who had laughed at his fidelity—his wife, who had looked—frightened! ‘All me eye!’ Her face started up before Granter—scaredunder its powder, with a mask drawn over it. And he had let that scoundrel go!... But why—scared? Blackmail—of all poisonous human actions!... Why scared?... What now ...!
1921.
The actor, Gilbert Caister, who had been ‘out’ for six months, emerged from his East Coast seaside lodging about noon in the day, after the opening of ‘Shooting the Rapids,’ on tour, in which he was playing Dr. Dominick in the last act. A salary of four pounds a week would not, he was conscious, remake his fortunes, but a certain jauntiness had returned to the gait and manner of one employed again at last.
Fixing his monocle, he stopped before a fishmonger’s and, with a faint smile on his face, regarded a lobster. Ages since he had eaten a lobster! One could long for a lobster without paying, but the pleasure was not solid enough to detain him. He moved upstreet and stopped again, before a tailor’s window. Together with the actual tweeds, in which he could so easily fancy himself refitted, he could see a reflection of himself, in the faded brown suit wangled out of the production of ‘Marmaduke Mandeville’ the year before the war. The sunlight in this damned town was very strong, very hard on seams and buttonholes, onknees and elbows! Yet he received the ghost of æsthetic pleasure from the reflected elegance of a man long fed only twice a day, of an eyeglass well rimmed out from a soft brown eye, of a velour hat salved from the production of ‘Educating Simon’ in 1912; and, in front of the window he removed that hat, for under it was his new phenomenon, not yet quite evaluated, hismêche blanche. Was it an asset, or the beginning of the end? It reclined backwards on the right side, conspicuous in his dark hair, above that shadowy face always interesting to Gilbert Caister. They said it came from atrophy of the—er—something nerve, an effect of the war, or of under-nourished tissue. Rather distinguished, perhaps, but——!
He walked on, and became conscious that he had passed a face he knew. Turning, he saw it also turned on a short and dapper figure—a face rosy, bright, round, with an air of cherubic knowledge, as of a getter-up of amateur theatricals.
Bryce-Green, by George!
“Caister? It is! Haven’t seen you since you left the old camp. Remember what sport we had over ‘Gotta Grampus’? By Jove! I am glad to see you. Doing anything with yourself? Come and have lunch with me.”
Bryce-Green, the wealthy patron, the movingspirit of entertainment in that South Coast convalescent camp. And, drawling slightly, Caister answered:
“Shall be delighted.” But within him something did not drawl: ‘By God, you’re going to have a feed, my boy!’
And—elegantly threadbare, roundabout and dapper—the two walked side by side.
“Know this place? Let’s go in here! Phyllis, cocktails for my friend Mr. Caister and myself, and caviare on biscuits. Mr. Caister is playing here! you must go and see him.”
The girl who served the cocktails and the caviare looked up at Caister with interested blue eyes. Precious! He had been ‘out’ for six months!
“Nothing of a part,” he drawled; “took it to fill a gap.” And below his waistcoat the gap echoed: ‘Yes, and it’ll take some filling.’
“Bring your cocktail along, Caister; we’ll go into the little further room, there’ll be nobody there. What shall we have—a lobstah?”
And Caister murmured: “I love lobstahs.”
“Very fine and large here. And how are you, Caister? So awfully glad to see you—only real actor we had.”
“Thanks,” said Caister, “I’m all right.” Andhe thought: ‘He’s a damned amateur, but a nice little man.’
“Sit here. Waiter, bring us a good big lobstah and a salad; and then—er—a small fillet of beef with potatoes fried crisp, and a bottle of my special hock. Ah! and a rum omelette—plenty of rum and sugah. Twig?”
And Caister thought: ‘Thank God, I do.’
They had sat down opposite each other at one of two small tables in the little recessed room.
“Luck!” said Bryce-Green.
“Luck!” replied Caister; and the cocktail trickling down him echoed: ‘Luck!’
“And what do you think of the state of the drama?” Oh! ho! A question after his own heart. Balancing his monocle by a sweetish smile on the opposite side of his mouth, Caister drawled his answer: “Quite too bally awful!”
“H’m! Yes,” said Bryce-Green; “nobody with any genius, is there?”
And Caister thought: ‘Nobody with any money.’
“Have you been playing anything great? You were so awfully good in ‘Gotta Grampus’!”
“Nothing particular. I’ve been—er—rather slack.” And with their feel around his waist his trousers seemed to echo: ‘Slack!’
“Ah!” said Bryce-Green. “Here we are! Do you like claws?”
“Tha-a-nks. Anything!” To eat—until warned by the pressure of his waist against his trousers! Huh! What a feast! And what a flow of his own tongue suddenly released—on drama, music, art; mellow and critical, stimulated by the round eyes and interjections of his little provincial host.
“By Jove, Caister! You’ve got amêche blanche. Never noticed. I’m awfully interested inmêches blanches. Don’t think me too frightfully rude—but did it come suddenly?”
“No, gradually.”
“And how do you account for it?”
‘Try starvation,’ trembled on Caister’s lips.
“I don’t.”
“I think it’s ripping. Have some more omelette? I often wish I’d gone on the regular stage myself. Must be a topping life, if one has talent, like you.”
Topping?
“Have a cigar. Waiter! Coffee and cigars. I shall come and see you to-night. Suppose you’ll be here a week?”
Topping! The laughter and applause—“Mr. Caister’s rendering left nothing to be desired; its —— and its —— are in the true spirit of ——!”
Silence recalled him from his rings of smoke. Bryce-Green was sitting, with cigar held out and mouth a little open, and bright eyes round as pebbles, fixed—fixed on some object near the floor, past the corner of the tablecloth. Had he burnt his mouth? The eyelids fluttered; he looked at Caister, licked his lips like a dog, nervously, and said:
“I say, old chap, don’t think me a beast, but are you at all—er—er—rocky? I mean—if I can be of any service, don’t hesitate! Old acquaintance, don’t you know, and all that——”
His eyes rolled out again towards the object, and Caister followed them. Out there above the carpet he saw it—his own boot. It dangled, because his knees were crossed, six inches off the ground—split—right across, twice, between lace and toecap. Quite! He knew it. A boot left him from the rôle of Bertie Carstairs, in ‘The Dupe,’ just before the war. Good boots. His only pair, except the boots of Dr. Dominick, which he was nursing. And from the boot he looked back at Bryce-Green, sleek and concerned. A drop, black when it left his heart, suffused his eye behind the monocle; his smile curled bitterly; he said:
“Not at all, thanks! Why?”
“Oh! n-n-nothing. It just occurred to me.” His eyes—but Caister had withdrawn the boot. Bryce-Green paid the bill and rose.
“Old chap, if you’ll excuse me; engagement at half-past two. So awf’ly glad to have seen you. Good-bye!”
“Good-bye!” said Caister. “And thanks!”
He was alone. And, chin on hand, he stared through his monocle into an empty coffee cup. Alone with his heart, his boot, his life to come.... ‘And what have you been in lately, Mr. Caister?’ ‘Nothing very much lately. Of course I’ve played almost everything.’ ‘Quite so. Perhaps you’ll leave your address; can’t say anything definite, I’m afraid.’ ‘I—I should—er—be willing to rehearse on approval; or—if I could read the part?’ ‘Thank you, afraid we haven’t got as far as that.’ ‘No? Quite! Well, I shall hear from you, perhaps.’ And Caister could see his own eyes looking at the manager. God! What a look.... A topping life! A dog’s life! Cadging—cadging—cadging for work! A life of draughty waiting, of concealed beggary, of terrible depressions, of want of food!
The waiter came skating round as if he desired to clear. Must go! Two young women had come in and were sitting at the other table between him and the door. He saw them look at him, and his sharpened senses caught the whisper:
“Sure—in the last act. Don’t you see hismêche blanche?”
“Oh! yes—of course! Isn’t it—wasn’t he——!”
Caister straightened his back; his smile crept out, he fixed his monocle. They had spotted his Dr. Dominick!
“If you’ve quite finished, sir, may I clear?”
“Certainly. I’m going.” He gathered himself and rose. The young women were gazing up. Elegant, with faint smile, he passed them close, managing—so that they could not see—his broken boot.
1922.