X
MONSIEUR DE VALBONNETTE
One of Paul's peculiarities, which I think I have indicated before, was a remissness in paying out the small coin of friendship. His visits were apparently governed by caprice, and as unaccountable as the fall of the red or black in roulette. Not to have seen him for the last month gave no warrant to expect him within the next. On the other hand, to have been honored with a visit last night was some reason for expecting a return on the morrow.
I had not seen him for two months when I ran across him in the foyer of the Elite Theatre. It was the first night of Durnham'sMiss Muffet. (You will remember Brasier as "the Spider.") Things apparently were inextricably tangled up for all the smart sinners, and I was rather dreading the fourth act. I was surprised to see him there, though I knew he had got into journalism. In the twilight of our under-world one may know a man a long time before one knows what he is doing—perhaps only discover it then because he is found nibbling at the same loaf as oneself. I had never seen Ingram before in evening dress; he looked very gaunt and foreign and distinguished. One mentally added a red ribbon and the enamelled cross of the Légion d'Honneur.
"Hullo, Ingram! you a first-nighter?"
"I'm doing it for theParthenon!"
"Oh! of course." Rumor had not lied, then. I had a horrible feeling that my comment sounded "knowing," and a suspicion that Ingram flushed at my tone. I made haste to change it.
"Lucky devil! You've got nearly a week to do Brasier's genius justice in. What d'you think of it all?"
"Pah! London bouquet. Sin and sachet powder."
"You won't say that in theParthenon?"
"No." I noticed then how tired he looked. The bell began to ring.
"Look here, old man! You're quite impossible, but I want a chat. Where can you come on to afterward? Pimlico's so far away. What do you say to theConcentric?" (I belong perforce to an "all-night" club.)
Ingram demurred. "No, thanks. I don't much care for the frescoes at theConcentric. I've got rooms—a room, I should say—nearly as close. It's not a bad little crib. Come round there as soon as you've fired in your stuff." And I pencilled the address on my shirt-cuff.
Paul's room was at the top of a narrow, old-world house in Beak Street, almost looking into Golden Square. A creeper wandered over the front, and there were little painted iron balconies at each window. The first floor was taken up by a bowed, weather-stained shop front, and behind its narrow panes, on a rusty wire blind, appeared the following legend in gilt lettering:
"J. FoudrinierTable Liner and Leather Gilder."
The narrow staircase up which we climbed—for he let me in himself—was fragrant with the smell that is said to make radicals.
"What d'you think of it, Prentice?"
"Fine! Atmosphere here, my boy."
"It might be worse," said Paul, apparently misunderstanding my remark. "Imagine fried fish!"
I looked round me as he fought with a stubborn fire. The room was poor and low; its furnishings mere flotsam of the Middle Victorian era. The bureau and tallboy that I used to admire so much at Westminster were gone. My heart sank a little. Paul wasn't getting on.
"Come over here a minute, Prentice," he said, getting up and taking the lamp. "Look!"
Upon the old-fashioned shutter which folded back in the window recess I made out a long name, clumsily cut and half obliterated by paint.
"What do you make of it?"
"It's not very distinct. There's a C and a V."
"I'll read it for you. It's 'C. Gaillard de Valbonette.' That thing at the top is meant for a coronet. Some Frenchémigréhad this room a hundred years ago, and amused himself by cutting his name. All this quarter swarmed with them at one time—Golden Square, Broad Street, King Street. Can't you imagine him at work here for a whole Sunday morning, with a nice pea-soup fog out in the square, and speculating about his wife or sweetheart in the Conciergerie. He's great company at times, is M. de Valbonette."
"I think you live too much alone, Ingram," I said.
He put down the lamp. "I wonder do I?" he said, twisting his beard. "But it's Satan reproving sin."
"Let's club lonelinesses, then," I answered impulsively. "I know what I'll have to put up with by now. Remember the old warning, 'Vae Soli!' If nothing else in the classics were true, that is."
"No," he said, roughly, "it's the wrong time. How can I afford a friend when I'm throwing out ballast all around. And besides"—he seemed to struggle with an invincible repugnance to speak—"Prentice, I'm living on money a woman—gives me."
"Oh!" Shocked as I was, I tried to keep my voice flat and toneless. Even as it escaped me, the exclamation was rather a request for further enlightenment.
"You won't repeat your invitation now?"
I got to my feet. "Yes, I will. You can come to-morrow—to-night, if you like. You're too good to lose, Ingram. I'm poor; but there's enough for two men like ourselves to struggle along on, even now. I can get you work of a sort almost at once; it'll be hack work, but you won't feel equal to anything better for awhile. Later on, when you're more yourself——"
Ingram shivered, and then, putting his hands on my shoulders, considered me a long while gravely and tenderly. I could have cursed to think of the charm of the man, wasted in loneliness and silence, and put to such base uses at last.
"My! but you'rewhite, Prentice, you'rewhite," he said. "Sit down"—in a lighter voice. "It's not as bad as it sounds. A man doesn't fall into a pit like that so suddenly. No; at first it was advances—advances; nothing more."
"On your book?" catching at a straw.
"Yes—on my book."
"From publishers?"
"I thought so at first. When I asked the question outright, it was too late. I was in debt already."
"But, my dear Ingram," I said, immensely relieved; "if Mrs. Hepworth—I suppose you mean Mrs. Hepworth——?"
"Yes."
"Well, if she liked to back her own opinion, I don't see where dishonor comes in at all. She's helped other people. And even if, when it's published, it turns out badly——"
"Prentice, it never will be published through her."
"Get it back then. We'll try somewhere else."
"I'm afraid I'd have some trouble even to get it back now."
The mystification was getting too much for me. I shrugged my shoulders helplessly.
"I'm sorry to seem mysterious," said Paul, "but I really am telling you all I know myself. I even hoped you'd be able to throw some light on it. Because you know as well as I do how it started. She was enthusiastic, wasn't she? Would see no fault. She advised me to cut a good deal, it's true; but it wasn't for reasons I could object to. Anyway I didn't object. I was too proud and happy. For once in my life I tasted full appreciation, full understanding. Oh! I know what that look of yours means—that I've been taking a woman's gush for gospel. But, I can tell you, a thing rings true or false to me the first time. Do you know, Prentice, once we were motoring to some place near Aylesbury, and she went ten miles out of our way to see the church where Ffoulkes—the English parson, you know—was a curate once. I'd just picked on the place haphazard, and then described it later. You know my mania for exactness in trifles. Nothing would satisfy her but to get out of the car, have the church opened, and scout around the vicarage. Now, is that genuine or isn't it? I tell you, sir, she made the people of my own book live for me—used to invent comments for them upon things we heard, so much in character that I wondered how I could have forgotten them myself."
"And then——?"
"And then"—wearily—"the subject dropped. When I spoke about it, which wasn't often, her answers were as evasive as a woman's can be who, I think, can't lie. I'm not an insistent person, and she seemed to guess it. Money got short: she guessed that too—offered me advances on the publication. Ever so delicately, mind."
"That was the very time for theéclaircissement."
"I know, I know. Don't be too grim. For me it's almost impossible to throw any sort of kindness back in people's faces. It's been responsible for half the unhappiness of my life. Then she got me this thing on theParthenon. Lord, how I hate it! and the people it brings me into contact with, and how they must hate me! Sleek young barristers, on the make—you know the sort—dine out every night and say, 'Dear lady.'"
"Ingram! I say 'dear lady' sometimes."
"Yes, yes—but not the way they do. A precious johnny-cake of an art critic who wears thumb-rings and doesn't wash behind his ears...."
I hadn't been listening very attentively. A light was breaking in upon me.
"You meet a good many priests at Mrs. Hepworth's, don't you?"
Ingram raised his hands expressively. "My dear Prentice, at all hours—dinner, tea and lunch—bishops, deans, canons, monsignori. I don't know half their titles."
"I gather you don't find them sympathetic."
"Prentice, I just writhe."
"Aren't they civil?"
"Oh, intensely! It's their mental attitude that maddens me. So perpetually on guard, so impermeable to argument: bearing the condemnation of the massed intellect of Europe with a pitying smile, denying words their plain significance. What is it, Prentice? Is every one else really wrong? Does to be born at Guipuscoa instead of at Epworth make all the difference? Do these men know something that you and I don't? Sometimes in their company I almost feel I'm under mesmeric influence."
"Perhaps you are. I've always suspected you of being mediumistic. But, tell me, don't you suspect anything from all this?"
"Suspect—what?"
"That your book is really being held up because these men won't give it animprimatur."
"Good Lord! I'm not one of their flock."
"No, but Althea is."
Paul flushed savagely, and muttered something I could not catch.
"Don't be too hard on her, Ingram. Probably her position's harder than either of us can conceive."
"Don't be afraid. There are about a hundred solid reasons why I couldn't be hard, even if I wanted to. Besides, I'm ceasing to care."
"Got the hump, in fact."
"Call it what you like. The book's become a scandal—a reproach. It's a relief not to see or hear of it. Once a certain point is reached a sense of humor comes to your rescue, and you cease to take a thing seriously. Something else is worrying me far more just now."
"What is it?"
"You'll only think me an old woman for my pains."
"Never," I answered stoutly. "Your virility is in your way."
"Do you believe in dreams?"
"Not as a rule. But at two o'clock in the morning, alone with you in a Soho attic whose associations you've just pointed out, I'm not so sure."
"I'm having the same one every night."
"Oh! What is it? A woman, or merely a tartan cat with acetylene eyes?"
"It's a woman."
"Go and see her then. Nothing will exorcise it like that."
"But it doesn't. Oh, Prentice! it's no use beating round the bush. You must know. I mean the woman we've just been talking about."
I confess I had been rather thinking of the Continental Express at Charing Cross.
"Go ahead old man," was all I said. "It will do you good to tell."
"It's in a church—always. A sort of foreign building with colored marble columns, gloomy side chapels, silver lamps, dark paintings of well-nourished virgin martyrs——"
"Wait a minute. Is it any place you've seen?"
"No. I'm sure of that.... She's always kneeling before one of the side altars. I'm not clear why I'm in the church at all. I'm not meeting her. Her back is turned, and she doesn't seem to know I'm there. And yet, mind you, I feel—I'm as certain as a man can be that there's something or other she wants to tell me—wants me to know. Something she's struggling with, and I'm not to go until it's told."
"At this point you wake?"
"I used to until last night. Do I sound childish, yet?"
"I'm immensely interested, Ingram. No one but a gross fool laughs at these things to-day."
"Well, last night I lost patience, and began to look around and to take bearings. I noticed there was a way in between the chapels, so you could pass from one to the other. I could get in front of her, see her face if I wanted to. Of course I wanted to. I tell you, I was tired out with all this nightly waiting. But something or other I couldn't see—'a Voice,' if you like—said, 'No, you can't!' 'Why not?' I argued. The answer was foolish."
"What was it?"
"'It breaks the Law'."
I moved restlessly. "But I hope you didn't mind the Law."
"No; I went in."
"Well——?"
He took a long breath. "Prentice, she's been dead for years and years."
"Pshaw!"
"Yes, dead, I tell you. There's nothing gruesome about it. Just—bleached—whiteness. But you can't mistake. You'd only have to lay your hand on her and she'd crumble away."
There was not a sound for a few moments, until becoming conscious my expression must look strange, I grabbed the poker and began to make brisk play with it. I also decided not to tell Paul I recognized the church perfectly from his description.
"What do you think of it?"
"Think? Oh, nothing. It's some sub-conscious crazy notion that has never been definitely formed in your own brain, so waits until you're asleep to sprout. The same thing's happened to me. Once I was visiting some people. They were so far disagreeable that one had to be very careful what one said before them. And every night I spent in their house I used to dream I was crossing the lawn, and underfoot, wherever I walked, were ducklings, and frogs, and new-born kittens, and everything that's most unpleasant to tread upon. You probably won't have the dream again.... What's the matter?"
"Look over there, Prentice! Do you see anything queer?"
I followed his eyes in the direction of the window upon whose shutter he had shown me the half-obliterated carving. To evidence my entire honesty in this matter, I will premise that, having shifted the lamp from the centre of the table in order to find me a pipe, Paul had plunged all that half of the room in shadow, and also that the curtain, which he had drawn roughly aside to show me theémigré'swork, still hung in awkward, bulgy folds. This much having been freely allowed, I don't mind going on and declaring that I saw, apparently as plainly as I have seen anything in my life, a man sitting upon the narrow window-seat. Every detail was distinct. He was as small as a woman, apparently old, and dressed entirely in black, with a white collar or cravat. One leg hung down to the floor, the other was drawn up to his chin, and his face rested upon it. He had white hair, gathered up or cut short round his ears, and a black cap. His expression was unforgettable. Serene, disdainful anger best expresses it.
I looked at him only a moment, for I don't believe in encouraging visions. In two strides I was across the room and shook the curtain loose.
"There goes some of your ghost," I said. I put the lamp back on the table. Its white reflection vanished from the blurred and darkened pane. "And there goes the rest!"
Paul didn't seem to listen. He was twisting his beard.
"See his face, Prentice? Now, I wonder what I said that irritated him?"