The men in dark uniforms had all they could do to drag him away from that little, lean, blackened, unconscious thing. Then they manacled Puce. Puce looked sheepish, and grinned at Kerr-Anderson.
Two of the six men in dark uniforms helped to revive Quillier.
“Drinks,” gasped Kerr-Anderson to the woman who kept the inn.
“Say, give me one,” begged the gentleman from America. Huge, helpless, manacled, he stood sheepishly among his uniformed captors. Kerr-Anderson stared at them. Quillier was reviving.
“Gets like that,” said the head warder indifferently. “Gave us the slip this morning. Certain death for someone. Homicidal maniac, that’s ’im. And he’s the devil to hold. Been like that eleven years. Got a shock, I fancy. Keeps on talking about a sister of his called Julia who was murdered and how he’ll be revenged for it....”
Kerr-Anderson had turned away. Quillier sobbed: “God have mercy on us!” The gentleman from America suddenly roared with laughter.
“Can’t be helped,” said the head warder. “Sorry you were put to trouble, sir. Good-day, gentlemen. Glad it was no worse.”
ALAS, it is a pity I know so little of trees and flowers, and how I shall tell this tale without their help I cannot imagine, for it is a tale that demands a profound knowledge of still, gentle things. But I daresay it will get itself written somehow, and saying that leads us to quite another question, for serious men will have it that that is the pity of nearly all the writing of our time, it just gets itself written somehow.
Now it is difficult not to think a little of my own life in telling of Hugh and Lamoir, for they helped me when I was very young, for a long time they were my only friends in London, and ever since they have remained the dearest. But it was only the other day that Hugh told me about the tree. I suppose he must have had a sort of idea of what might happen and wanted to tell someone about it while he could. But it’s odd that I had known him all those years, him and Lamoir, and he had never so much as mentioned the tree—when out he suddenly comes with it!
Of course there will be those to say that he hadn’t concealed anything worth concealing, that it’s an impossible story anyhow, and who could believe it? But I do believe it decidedly, for how could Hugh have made it up? Hugh wasn’t animaginative man, not a bit. That, in point of fact, is what the story is about. Of course, he had a passion for fine things, a passion for touching fine things, but your collector or your connoisseur isn’t generally anything of an imaginative man. Lamoir, now, she was quite different, and she might easily have thought of the garden and the tree and the whole business, but so far as I can make out Hugh and Lamoir never once breathed a word to each other about it.
I have never been able to think of Lamoir quite steadily, I liked her too much. I know a writer is supposed to be impersonal, but that can’t be helped. She knew the very hearts of trees and flowers, Lamoir did, and she was always so still and quiet, like a flower herself, that you never knew what she was thinking of. And that is more or less how the trouble between them began, so Hugh told me the other day. He never knew what she was thinking of, but he hoped for the best, and then one day he found that she had been thinking away from him all the time. That is what Hugh said. But I feel that the truth of it was that he never thought Lamoir was thinking of anything at all, except maybe about what a good husband he was, and then one day he got a shock. Many men seem to be like that, they have happy natures, for when their wives are quiet and thoughtful they never dream that those thoughts might be out of accord with their own, and when they do at last realise that something has been wrong all the time they are surprised and hurt and want to know why they were not told sooner. As though, you know, some thingscan be told sooner, as though some thingscanbe told until it is too late!
Now Hugh and Lamoir were a difficult pair to know, together or singly. Hugh wasn’t at all your democratic sort, there was nothing at all easy-going about him. I remember once seeing him in a crowded room and thinking he was like an island of nerves in an ocean of grins. Lamoir said he was proud. He simply didn’t seem to concern himself at all with other people’s opinions; it was as though he just hadn’t the time to go about dealing in the slack forms of geniality which pass for manners in this century. That is Hugh’s phrase, not mine. Lamoir left him about nine years ago.
They say that people made a great fuss over Lamoir when she first came from India, because she was so lovely. That must have been about twenty-five years ago, and about nine years ago she packed up a lot of trunks and went to Algeria. People were very surprised at that, for Lamoir was beloved of everyone, and she seemed to be liking her life in England—as much, anyhow, as anyone ever does seem to like his or her life in England, for there seems to be a feeling in people that one shouldn’t like living in England. I like it very much myself, but then I am not English. People said vaguely that she was going away because her heart was weak—quite all right, but weak, and that she must have quiet. She never came back.
I went to see her in Algeria two winters ago. I wanted very much just to see how she was in that solitary new life. Naturally I didn’t tell Hugh the main reason why I was going to Algeria, and I think he had an idea I was going there to try to write a book about it, one of those marvellous books about sheiks and sand and suburban Englishwomen with love flaming in their eyes to such a degree that none of their friends at home would ever recognise them. As Hugh never used to speak of his wife one had nothing to go on as to what his feelings about her were, and so, of course, one said nothing about her either.
Just the same, that is how I found Lamoir. She had the grace of silence, of reflection, to a rare degree. Some people found her frightfully dull, but then imagine what “some people” are, it can be said that their disapproval is a distinction that no fairly admirable person should ever be without. The house she was living in had been the palace of the last of the Admirals of the Dey’s fleet, Lamoir said, and one could well believe it. There were dungeons below, deep, dark, crooked, with chains and iron clamps on the walls where the poor devils of Christian slaves used to be kept, and on the morning Lamoir was showing me round there was a vampire-bat hanging asleep from the black broken walls. From the dungeons there was a secret passage, Lamoir said, down to the bay two miles away at the foot of the hill, and through this passage the old Admiral scoundrel had tried to escape when the French stormed the town about eighty years ago—or maybe it was more or less than eighty years ago; I don’t know when it was, and Lamoir didn’t know either.
One morning we were walking about on the pink tiles of the flat, uneven roof, not talkingmuch, while below the sea slept. Lamoir asked after Hugh, just how he was, and I said he was quite well. “Lonely,” I added.
We sat on the parapet of the roof, looking down the hill at the white untidy town. There was an American liner in the bay, like a smudge. At last Lamoir said: “Yes, he was always lonely. Lonely and proud. Hugh is very proud. Don’t you think so?”
I said: “And you, Lamoir, aren’t you proud, too?”
You see, I knew nothing of the difficulty between Hugh and Lamoir. All I knew was that two dear friends of mine had parted from each other nine years before. Lamoir was looking towards the sea, she was smiling. Then she shook her head suddenly. Her hair was quite grey, and short, and curly—you can see how attractive Lamoir was, an autumnal flower.
“Oh, no!” she said. “I’mnot proud, not a bit. And I don’t like proud people.”
“I do!” I said.
She said gravely: “Youdo, of course. But you are young, and it’s quite right that you should like proud people and should try to be proud yourself, though I should think your sense of humour would bother you a little while you were trying. I think young people should be proud, because if they are not they will put up with makeshifts and get dirty; but elderly people and old people should not be proud, because it prevents them from understanding anything.”
“But elderly people,” I said, “don’t they get dirty too, if they’re not proud?”
She laughed at me, and all she said was: “I was talking about nice elderly people.” And there the conversation ended, just nowhere. I think it very silly in a man to go generalising about women, but if I were to start generalising I might say that most abstract conversations between men end nowhere, but you have a feeling that at least something interesting has passed, while with a woman an abstract conversation ends nowhere and you have a feeling that she has only been talking about whatever it was just out of politeness.
I remember that what struck me most about Lamoir at that time was how happy she was, happy and feeling safe in her happiness. That puzzled me then, for I knew she loved Hugh.
I would see a good deal of Hugh, sometimes going to stay with him at Langton Weaver, and often, in London, dining with him at his house in Charles Street, just he and I alone. It was very pleasant to know of a quiet house in which I might now and then pass an evening talking, as one always did with Hugh if one talked at all, of books and tapestries and fine things. I never knew a man who had such a passion for the touch of fine things as Hugh, and seeing him thoughtfully holding a little old ivory figure in his hand one might almost think his skin was in love with it.
But a few weeks ago, the last time I was ever to dine with my friend, it instantly struck me thathe was in quite a different mood. And presently he told me about the garden and the tree. He didn’t preface it with anything in particular, he was thoughtfully twisting the stem of his port-glass when he said: “Nearly nine years since I have seen Lamoir——”
I said vaguely: “Yes....” Never once, you see, in all those nine years, had he so much as mentioned the name of Lamoir, and so I felt rather stunned at first.
Hugh went on thoughtfully, not particularly to me: “And the first time I saw her I was nine years old. She must have been seven.”
I said: “But I always understood that Lamoir passed her childhood in India and never came to England until she was twenty or so! I’d no idea you too were in India when you were little.”
“I wasn’t,” he said, and he smiled, I think out of shyness just because he was talking about himself. “I wasn’t. That’s why, you see, it was so funny——”
I was trying to imagine Lamoir seven years old. It was easy, of course, as it always is easy with people one likes. Her curly grey hair would be golden then, and maybe her grey eyes would be more blue than grey, and they would look enormous in a tiny face. And she would be walking, very still, making no noise at all, with two thin brown sticks for legs and two blue pools for eyes, very thoughtful indeed, and all this would be happening in a garden of red and yellow flowers with a long low white house nearby. That was how Hugh first saw Lamoir, in a garden, and nearby a long low white house with a broad flight of stepsup to the open doorway and tall, shining windows.
Dazzling white the house seemed to him, Hugh said, but that must have been because there was a very brilliant sun that afternoon. There was no noise, except just summer noises, and although he didn’t remember actually seeing any birds there must have been a lot of birds about, because he heard them. And simply masses of flowers there were in that garden, red and yellow flowers, and over a grey wall somewhere there was hung a thick curtain of flowers that may have been blue roses. And they may very well have been blue roses, Hugh said. And bang in the middle of all those flowers was Lamoir, staring at him as he came into the garden. Hugh was so surprised, he said, that he didn’t know what to say or do.
He hadn’t, you see, intended coming into that garden at all. He hadn’t, a moment before, known anything at all about that garden or whose garden it was or even that there was a garden there at all. That is the funny part about the whole thing, the way it just sprung out at him, garden, Lamoir, blue roses and all, out of the summer afternoon. But there it was, and there Lamoir was, staring at Hugh. Not that she looked a bit surprised, Hugh said, although she was such a kid. She just stuck her finger into her mouth and came towards him.
Hugh’s father’s place, Langton Weaver, lay on the slope of a low hill not far from Hungerford, looking over the plain towards where the old red Elizabethan pile of Littlecott lies embowered in trees. Hugh, that bright afternoon, was kickinghis heels about in the lane outside his father’s gates, which was of course against all rules. But Hugh was lonely that afternoon, he never had any brothers or sisters, and he was wondering what he would do next, and he was hoping that someone would come along to do something with—when, bang, there he was in that garden and a little kid advancing on him with a finger stuck in her mouth. It was very odd, Hugh said.
“Hullo!” she said. All eyes, that’s what she was.
“Hullo!” Hugh said. She was only a kid, after all. Hugh was nine.
“You’re a boy,” she said.
“Of course I’m a boy,” Hugh said, and he was going to add “just as you’re a girl,” but a fellow couldn’t stand there arguing all day with a slip of a thing like that. Then he suddenly remembered he didn’t know where he was.
“I say,” he said, “I don’t know how I got here. What’s this place?”
She twisted her finger out of her mouth and stared at the wet thing. Hugh remembered that it shone in the sun. And her hair shone in the sun, too. Hugh said her hair shone even when they were in the shade. But of course he didn’t attach any importance to that kind of thing.
“I say, where am I?” Hugh asked again. He must have sounded pathetic, in spite of himself.
“You’re here,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Hugh,” he said. “But, I say, where’s here? I’ve never seen that house before. My father’s got the biggest house round here, Langton Weaver.My father’s Lord of the Manor, and when he’s dead I’m Lord of the Manor.”
“Oo!” she said, staring.
Hugh said he felt frightfully let down. Any other kid would have exalted the merits of her own house, but she just swallowed everything and stared at you. Hugh said he felt as though he had been boasting.
“Our house doesn’t look so jolly clean as this,” he said. “Rather live here, any day.”
And he suddenly realised he was speaking the truth. That was the amazing part of it, Hugh said: suddenly to feel that he would much rather live here than in his father’s house. With this kid. And from that moment, somehow, he forgot every particle of his surprise at being in that garden.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Not got a name,” the kid said. “No name.” All legs and eyes, that’s what she was.
“But you must have a name!” Hugh cried. “Everyone’s got names, even dogs and cats. We’ve got seven dogs and they’re all called after every day in the week except one because you can’t call a dog Sunday, father says.”
“No name,” she said breathlessly. “I’m me.”
“But look here, how do they call you when they want you?” He thought he’d got her there all right, Hugh said.
She giggled. “I just come,” she giggled. “I don’t need to be called. Oo! Just come when I’m wanted. Did you want me? You did, didn’t you?”
He stared at her, he was so dumbfounded.Jiminy, hadn’t he wanted her! Anyhow, hadn’t he wanted something to happen. But how had this kid known that?
“Look here, no rotting!” he warned her.
“Not rotting,” she said, sucking her finger. “What’s rotting?”
“But what’s this place?” he asked almost frantically. “Hasn’t it got a name either?”
“Oo, yes! Playmate Place.”
“It’s not!” Hugh cried. “Not Playmate Place!You’rerotting now.”
Hugh says she took her finger out of her mouth, stamped her foot and screamed at one and the same time. “Itiscalled Playmate Place and Playmate Place and Playmate Place! So there!”
“Oh, all right!” Hugh said, and he didn’t let on any further about his opinion of a house called Playmate Place. Hugh says a boy of nine would rather die than live in a house called Playmate Place. It sounded so soft. But she was only a kid, after all, and she couldn’tknowanything.
“I’m going to run now,” the kid said, standing on one leg and staring at the other.
That was too much, Hugh said. She was going to run! As though shecouldrun! “Beat you blindfolded,” he just said.
“Oo, you try!” she giggled, and she turned, and she flew. She just flew, Hugh said. All brown legs and golden hair. He hadn’t a chance. But he must have been quite a nice boy really, Hugh said, because he began laughing at himself. He beat this kid!
She stopped, miles away, just under a tree. Hugh panted on. And they must have run somedistance, for the house and the blue roses were no longer visible. Hugh couldn’t remember any of the particulars of where they were now. There was a sense of flowers, he said, clean flowers, a lot of flowers. And that tree, under which Lamoir was waiting for him. Of course he didn’t know she was Lamoir then. That tree seemed to him a big tree. Hugh said that when you touched it it smelt like a sort of echo of all the good smells you had ever smelt.
But he hadn’t come quite up to her when she turned and, before you could say “knife,” shinned up that tree!
“I say!” cried Hugh.
“Can’t catch me!” panted a little voice from among the leaves.
“Can if I want to,” said Hugh, looking up. All he could see between the leaves was something white.
“Like you to want to,” piped the something white, and Hugh fell in love for the first and last time in his life.
When he caught up with her, on a branch high up, she said “Oo!” and gave him a damp kiss on his cheek. She didn’t giggle or anything, she was as serious as a man playing cricket. Hugh felt rather ashamed.
“Look here,” he said, to say something, “what’s this tree called? Never seen a tree like this before.”
“It’s a lovely tree,” she said, staring. “It’s called Playmate Tree, of course.”
“That’s a soft word, playmate,” Hugh rashly said.
She stared at him with those big grey eyes, Hugh said, so that he began to feel weak, just weak with meanness. And then she said “Yow!” and wept. Well! She wept. Hugh didn’t know what to do, stuck up there on a branch of a tree and this kid crying fit to break her kid’s heart. He kept muttering, “I say, I’m sorry,” and things like that, and then he found she was somehow in his arms, and he kissing her and kissing her hair. Her hair smelt like the tree, Hugh said, so it must have been a funny sort of tree.
“Kiss the tree now,” the small voice said. “You’ve hurt it.”
“Oh, I say!” said Hugh, but he did as he was told, and then they climbed down the magic tree in silence, he trying to help her and almost breaking his neck. They walked slowly back, hand in hand, towards where the house was, through the sweet lush grass. There was music somewhere, Hugh said. Or maybe there wasn’t and he only thought there was. And Hugh said that he was happier at that moment than he had ever been since in his whole life.
“Mustn’t laugh at words like playmate,” said the wise kid. “You’ll get hurt if you do.”
“I say, I’d like to see you again,” Hugh said shyly, and he found himself walking on the dusty lane towards Nasyngton! He was almost in Nasyngton, he could see, down the slope, the thick old bridge over the Kennet. He must have walked two miles or more while he thought he was in that garden. Playmate Place. He stopped to wipe his face, wondering passionately. He was simply streaming with perspiration. But whathad happened to that old garden, that’s what puzzled him. And that kid! That jolly little kid. He rubbed his cheek, but he couldn’t be certain if there still was a damp patch where she had kissed him. Anyhow, it would have dried by then, and, anyhow again, he’d got so hot since.
When he got home Hugh told Hugh’s father the outline of his adventure, and Hugh’s father told Hugh he had broken rules by being outside the gates at all and that he must have been dreaming, but Hugh said passionately that he was sorry he had broken rules but he hadn’t been anything like dreaming, and Hugh’s father told Hugh not to be an ass, and two years later Hugh’s father died.
Hugh did not see the garden of the white house again. Playmate Place. Hugh, as he grew up, blushed to think of Playmate Place. He had blushed at the time, and later on he blushed at the very thought of it. He wouldn’t have dared let any of his friends at school even dream of his ever having swallowed such a soft yarn as the Playmate Place one. But, despite himself, the face of the kid whose name was to be Lamoir stayed with him, and her silver voice, and her enormous eyes. And now and then in his dreams, Hugh said, he would seem to hear the faint echo of an “Oo!”
It was almost twenty years to a day after the adventure of Playmate Place that Hugh met Lamoir at a party at Mace, Guy de Travest’s place.Miss Cavell her name was. He recognised her, he said, at once, at very first sight. She had been seven then and she was twenty-seven now, but he knew her on sight. And when she spoke, he was quite certain. Of course she didn’t suck her finger and say “Oo!” any longer, but without a doubt Lamoir Cavell was the grown-up of the kid of Playmate Place. And he actually found himself wondering, as he talked to her that first time at Mace, if she recognised him—and then he almost laughed aloud at his childishness, for of course the whole thing had been a boy’s dream. But it was very odd, his dreaming about someone he was actually to meet twenty years later. And once he fancied, as he turned to her suddenly, that she was looking at him a little strangely, in a puzzled sort of way maybe, with that small slanting smile of hers as though she was smiling at something she just hadn’t said. Oh, Lamoir must have been very beautiful then!
She was born in India, where old man Cavell was something in the Civil Service, and she had lived in India until recently, when her father died. Hugh, that first time, asked her if she had ever been in England as a child, and she said, staring at him in a way that seemed so familiar to him that his heart gave a throb: “Only in dreams.” But he didn’t tell her about the Playmate Place then. Then was the time to tell her, then or never. He never told her.
They walked in enchantment, those two, for the next few days. Guy de Travest has told me since that the whole house-party went about on tiptoe, so as not to disturb Hugh and Lamoir intheir exquisite contemplation of their triumph over the law of life, which is of course unknowable, but must be pretty depressing, seeing what life is.
They were married in the little village church at Mace, and Hilary Townshend was Hugh’s best man, and Hilary has told me since that he almost wept to see them going away—knowing as he did so certainly, Hilary said, that Hugh and Lamoir had taken the one step in life which will wake any couple up from any dream.
Hugh continually pulled at the stiff grey affair on his upper lip as he told me of his marriage. “It’s Playmate Place,” he said, “that is important in the story: much more important than my married life. Lamoir and I never quite reached Playmate Place in actual life. We were in sight of it sometimes—when I let Lamoir have her head. But I only see that now, I didn’t realise it then.”
He said that about the importance of Playmate Place quite seriously. And, you know, I took it quite as seriously. A dream or vision or whatever it was, that has lasted fresh in a man’s mind from the age of nine to the age of forty-nine is, after all, a thing to be taken seriously. I haven’t, as a rule, much patience with dreams; and there’s a deal too much talk of dreams in the novels of the day, for it’s so easy to write “dream”; but Hugh’s, as they say, rather “got” me.
He never spoke about it to Lamoir. “I began to, several times,” he said, “but somehow I never went on. You see, there was such a difference between our life together and the way we had been together in that garden. I mean, such a tremendous difference in spirit. She was the same, but I—well, I was the same, too, but only that ‘same’ which had jeered at the word ‘playmate.’ It’s difficult to explain. I knew, you see, as I said things that might hurt her, that I was in the wrong—and I didn’t want to say them, either—but somehow it was in me to say them and so I said them. It’s somehow the impulses you can’t put into words that are the strongest.”
The marriage of Hugh and Lamoir appeared to have gone much the same way as most marriages. At first they were very happy, and they were quite certain that they were going to be even happier. Then they thought that perhaps they were not so happy as they had been, and then they were quite certain that they were not so happy as they had been. Hugh said it was more or less like that.
Hugh, at the time, had thought privately that this was because Lamoir did not take very much interest in his collections of fine things. Not that he wasn’t quite contented with his marriage. Good Lord, contented! I wonder what Lamoir thought about that. Contented! But she never confided, that quiet Lamoir.
It was a great unhappiness to her, Hugh said, that there were no children. A very great unhappiness. He hadn’t, he admitted, minded so much, because year by year he was growing more absorbed in his collections. Throughout his married life he would go off searching Europe for pieces. Italy, Greece, Spain. At first he used to take Lamoir with him, but later on she would stay at home. She preferred that, Hugh said.She wouldn’t stay in the London house, but at Langton Weaver, the house which was larger but not so clean-looking as Playmate Place. Lamoir lived in the garden and the park. I met Hugh and Lamoir in the last years of their life together, and whenever I went to stay at Langton Weaver I would find Lamoir in the park. She would generally be standing just off a path, quite still, wearing gardening-gloves, and looking thoughtfully down at the flowers. Then she would touch one here and there. She was gardening.
So, Hugh said, ten years passed; and he, when he thought of it at all, would think theirs a happy enough marriage, as marriages go. Reality, after all, couldn’t be so good as dreams, ever. That is what he thought. And he loved Lamoir. He was a collector of fine things, and so it was bred in his bone to love Lamoir. She loved him, too. Sometimes in quite a strange abandoned way, for a woman who had been married so long. In quite an un-English way, when you came to think of it—although it can’t be in the least “un-English” to be passionate, but one gets into the habit of saying the idiotic things that English novelists say. Lamoir would say things unmentionable and beautiful, in the rare moments. But, somehow, those rarest moments would never be of Hugh’s contriving, not after the first year or so. They would come suddenly, out of the night of ordinary marriage, they would come like angels with silent wings. And Lamoir would be the voice of the angel with silent wings, and Lamoir in those rarest moments would be the very body and soul of love. But Hugh couldn’t woo those moments.Perhaps no man ever can. It may be, Hugh said, that there’s a frontier to any woman’s love for any man, and beyond that frontier is the unknowable darkness and unknowable light, and from that secret place can leap a passion that no man in the world is worthy to woo. It just comes or it doesn’t come.
These moments did not come when he thought they would, when he expected them. She would somehow be passive then, somehow there yet not there. Then suddenly, when he had got used to the hurt of her “coldness,” out of the night of ordinary marriage would sweep the angel with the silent wings in the body and the voice of Lamoir. Hugh said that sometimes the song of the sirens was in Lamoir’s voice, but if Hugh was right about that Ulysses must have been just a silly old man and the sirens darlings.
For Hugh, his pleasure in travelling was given an exquisite point by returning to Lamoir. That was when he seemed to love her most, as he returned to her. One gets out of the habit of being desirous if one stays in the home all the time. And Lamoir would be waiting for him, sweet and still. He thought of her all the time, as he returned towards her.
Once, nine years ago, he returned to her by night. He had been away from England for four or five months, and, arriving that evening in London, he had dined quickly and taken the first train down to Langton Weaver. It was a cool Julynight, loaded with stars. He had walked the two miles from the railway station.
Hugh was happy as he walked. He was conscious of his happiness, of his health, of his strength. Hugh was forty then, a dry, taut forty. And the idea of Lamoir, white and supple, was like a temptation that exalted and ennobled. The sky was almost Italian, Hugh said, the stars were so unusually clear and bright. He walked, not up the drive towards the door, but across the lawn towards the three French windows of the drawing-room. They showed a faint bronze light. Lamoir was there. She was sitting in a Dorothy chair of old blue velvet, reading. A lamp in a bowl of yellow amber lit the book, but her face was only a frail whiteness, and her hair was as though veiled. He pushed open a window which was unlatched. He called: “Lamoir!”
She made that gesture he knew so well, loved so well. Lamoir would not be Lamoir without that gesture. Always, at first sight of him returning to her, she would make that gesture. It was delicious with a lure which he never could explain. It was as though she was afraid of her love for him. Towards her heart, the gesture was: but faint, not definite: a hand like a white bird, fluttering, fluttering vainly, fluttering out of stillness, fluttering back into stillness—all in a second. Lamoir, you see, had a weak heart, and that was why, maybe, she was born so still, to balance the weakness of her heart.
And it was always the same with him when he saw her after an absence. The world stood still, no living thing moved but Lamoir’s hand and hisinfinite desire. The pleasure of seeing her was exquisite, like a pain. In all his life Hugh had known no woman but Lamoir. Seeing her now, the earth and sky held only himself and her and the thing that was between them. That vivid thing with eyes of fire which can be beautiful or beastly. She troubled him and exalted him, and somehow his love for her would be stabbed by a queer sense of terror, which he never could explain. And she was so still, so passive, unknowable. But her eyes, as he made to touch her, adored him.
She lay beside him a long time in the delicious silence of love before she spoke and said: “Good-bye, Hugh.”
He thought she must have gone mad. He stared at her, through the darkness. “Good-bye?” he echoed.
“Yes,” she said, and that was all she said.
He had put out the light in the bowl of yellow amber. He lay in the darkness, understanding nothing. Then his mind grew darker than the room, and he just managed to say:
“But, Lamoir, are you mad? Good-bye! What do you mean?”
She did not answer for what seemed a long time. She was a soft darkness in the dark room, beside him. The night was a blue curtain over the windows, hung with stars like toys. He touched her, as though to prove to himself that he was not dreaming. He must be dreaming. But she was there, beside him, soft, warm: Lamoir, his wife. And the stars on the windows were as though at his finger-tips, but Lamoir wasuntouchable. She was untouchable, suddenly. She was most untouchable when he touched her. It seemed wrong to touch her. That made him angry. He laughed.
“I’m damned,” he said, “if I understand what all this is about! I come home after months away, and you say good-bye!”
“I don’t think,” she said, “that I can explain. Not now....”
He laughed. She was going away, and she didn’t trouble to explain why!
He wanted her to say: “Don’t be bitter, please!” But she was silent. She was beside him, yet her breath came from across the universe. And what on earth was it all about?
“But do you mean you want to leave me?” he asked, astounded, angry.
She said: “Yes.”
“Lamoir!”
She said: “I can’t bear it any longer, Hugh. I love you too much.”
He repeated idiotically: “You love me too much?”
Now she was standing, a shadow in the darkness, away from him, a million miles away from him. He was silent. All the inside of him went silent. Suddenly there were no words, no need for words, no Lamoir, no Hugh, nothing but the primal nothingness before Adam. He would not hold her for a moment if she wished to leave him.
“You will understand,” she said. “You see, I want to be free to love you, and you won’t let me. You will understand that, too. God has given me no children, Hugh. He has given meonly my love for you. That is all I have, and I have been sacrificing it to you for ten years; but now I am growing afraid for it, it’s become such a poor, beaten, wretched bit of a thing, and so I must leave you. I owe that to myself, dear—and to the you inside you.”
And he said, despite himself, that he loved her. What was so strange was that, suddenly, he had ceased to feel like her husband, suddenly it seemed to him inconceivable that he had possessed her countless times. Inconceivable that he and she had been one, when now they were so apart! It had seemed so easy then to touch her—now, not a lifetime would surmount the barriers she had raised between them. He suddenly thought: “Good Lord, how lucky I’ve been in the past—and I never knew it!”
He was going to touch her, when like a blow on the face he realised that to touch her would be indecent. She was not his wife. Suddenly, absurdly, he thought of Soames Forsyte, of John Galsworthy. Hugh had always disliked Galsworthy for his creation of Forsyte, a man who could rape his wife.
Lamoir said suddenly: “There will be another chance later on....”
He leapt at that. “Later on? Lamoir, you mean you will come back?”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. I shall never come back.”
“You will,” he said between his teeth, and with a great effort of will he took her in his arms.
But afterwards she went away, and she never came back.
We were silent for a long time after Hugh had spoken of the way Lamoir had left him. And then he said: “Of course she was right. I did understand, later on. That is why I have made no attempt to see her these last nine years. Love, you see, has many masks. We slip on one or other of them, and we say, ‘This is love,’ but really it’s only a fraction of love. And a fraction of love can be the negation of love. Love is enormous and difficult. We must learn how to love, as we must learn how to play music. I did not know how. But I shall see Lamoir soon. I am going to Algeria next week. I have been wanting to go for a long time, but I must just wait another few days....”
“But, Hugh, why do you wait even one day?” I protested. “Lamoir is longing to see you, I know she is.”
“Yes. But I must wait four or five days or so. For a sort of anniversary. My idea, if you won’t laugh at me too much, is to see Playmate Place again, and then that will give me a clue as to how to deal with Lamoir when I see her in the flesh. I’m sure it will give me a clue. And I’m sure I shall see it again, in three or four days from to-day. I’d like to, immensely. Of course it won’t have changed one bit, but I wonder if Lamoir and I will have grown up. If we have, it will be rather a feat to climb that tree, won’t it? Or maybe the tree will have grown too, though it seemed huge enough at the time. You see, the thing seems to go in cycles of twentyyears, more or less. I saw the garden for the first time on a June day in my ninth year. I met Lamoir for the first time on a June day, perhaps the same one, in my twenty-ninth year. And now I’m forty-nine, and the day falls in three or four or five days’ time. Either, I’m quite sure, I see that garden again on that day, or I see Lamoir herself, or....”
“Or?” I said. “Or what?”
“Well, God knows!” Hugh smiled, pulling at that stiff grey thing on his upper lip, and on the dawn of the fourth day from that night Hugh was found by one of the keepers of Hyde Park lying at the foot of a great tree near the Albert Gate, dead of a broken neck. At the inquest there was read out a letter from his wife’s lawyers, which had been delivered at Hugh’s house on the morning of his death and which he couldn’t, therefore, have read, saying that they had heard by wire from Algeria that his wife had died of heart-failure the day before.
IT is fortunate that the affair should have happened to Mr. Ralph Wyndham Trevor and be told by him, for Mr. Trevor is a scholar of some authority. It is in a spirit of almost ominous premonition that he begins the tale, telling how he was walking slowly up Davies Street one night when he caught a cab. It need scarcely be said that Davies Street owes its name to that Mary Davies, the heiress, who married into the noble house of Grosvenor. That was years and years ago, of course, and is of no importance whatsoever now; but it may be of interest to students.
It was very late on a winter’s night, and Mr. Trevor was depressed, for he had that evening lost a great deal more than he could afford at the card game of auction bridge. Davies Street was deserted; and the moon and Mr. Trevor walked alone towards Berkeley Square. It was not the sort of moon that Mr. Trevor remembered having seen before. It was, indeed, the sort of moon one usually meets only in books or wine. Mr. Trevor was sober.
Nothing happened, Mr. Trevor affirms, for quite a while: he just walked; and, at that corner where Davies Street and Mount Street join together the better to become Berkeley Square,stayed his walking upon an idea that he would soothe his depression with the fumes of a cigarette. His cigarette-case, however, was empty. All London, says Mr. Trevor, appeared to be empty that night. Berkeley Square lay pallid and desolate: looking clear, not as though with moonlight, but with dead daylight; and never a voice to put life into the still streets, never a breeze to play with the bits of paper in the gutters or to sing among the dry boughs of the trees. Berkeley Square looked like nothing so much as an old stage property that no one had any use for. Mr. Trevor had no use at all for it; and became definitely antagonistic to it when a taxicab crawled wretchedly across the waste white expanse and the driver, a man in a Homburg hat of green plush, looked into his face with a beseeching look.
“Taxi, sir?” he said.
Mr. Trevor says that, not wanting to hurt the man’s feelings, he just looked another way.
“Nice night, sir,” said the driver miserably, “for a drive in an ’ackney-carriage.”
“I live,” said Mr. Trevor with restraint, “only a few doors off. So hackney-carriage to you.”
“No luck!” sighed the driver and accelerated madly away even as Mr. Trevor changed his mind, for would it not be an idea to drive to the nearest coffee-stall and buy some cigarettes? This, however, he was not to do, for there was no other reply to his repeated call of “Taxi!” but certain heavy blows on the silence of Davies Street behind him.
“Wanting a taxi, sir?” said a voice which could only belong to a policeman.
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Trevor bitterly. “I never want a taxi. But now and then a taxi-driver thrusts himself on me and pays me to be seen in his cab, just to give it a tone. Next question.”
“Ho!” said the policeman thoughtfully.
“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Trevor.
“Ho!” said the policeman thoughtfully.
“The extent of your vocabulary,” said Mr. Trevor gloomily, “leads me to conclude that you must have been born a gentleman. Have you, in that case, a cigarette you could spare?”
“Gaspers,” said the policeman.
“Thank you,” said Mr. Trevor, rejecting them. “I am no stranger to ptomaine poisoning.”
“That’s funny,” said the policeman, “your saying that. I was just thinking of death.”
“Death?” said Mr. Trevor.
“You’ve said it,” said the policeman.
“I’ve said what?” said Mr. Trevor.
“Death,” said the policeman.
“Oh, death!” said Mr. Trevor. “I always say ‘death,’ constable. It’s my favourite word.”
“Ghoulish, I calls it, sir. Ghoulish, no less.”
“That entirely depends,” said Mr. Trevor, “on what you are talking about. In some things, ghoulish is as ghoulish does. In others, no.”
“You’ve said it,” said the policeman. “But ghoulish goes, in this ’ere affair. One after the other lying in their own blood, and not a sign as to who’s done it, not a sign!”
“Oh, come, constable! Tut-tut! Not even a thumb-mark in the blood?”
“I’m telling you,” said the policeman severely. “Corpses slit to ribbons all the way from ’Ampstead ’Eath to this ’ere Berkeley Square. And why? That’s what I asks myself. And why?”
“Of course,” said Mr. Trevor gaily, “there certainly have been a lot of murders lately. Ha-ha! But not, surely, as many as all that!”
“I’m coming to that,” said the policeman severely. “We don’t allow of the Press reporting more’n a quarter of them. No, sir. That’s wot it ’as come to, these larst few days. A more painful situation ’as rarely arisen in the hannals of British crime. The un’eard-of bestiality of the criminal may well baffle ordinary minds like yours and mine.”
“I don’t believe a word of it!” snapped Mr. Trevor.
“Ho,youdon’t!” said the policeman. “Youdon’t!”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Trevor, “I don’t. Do you mean to stand there and tell me that I wouldn’t ’ave ’eard—I mean, have heard of this criminal if he had really existed?”
“You’re a gent,” said the policeman.
“You’ve said it,” said Mr. Trevor.
“And gents,” said the policeman, “know nothing. And what they do know is mouldy. Ever ’eard of Jack the Ripper?”
“Yes, I ’ave,” said Mr. Trevor bitterly.
“Have is right, sir, if you’ll excuse me. Well, Jack’s death was never rightly proved, not it! So it might well be ’im at ’is old tricks again, even though ’e has been retired, in a manner of speaking, these forty years. Remorseless and hindiscriminate murder, swift and sure, was Jack’s line, if you remember, sir.”
“Before my time,” said Mr. Trevor gloomily.
“Well, Jack’s method was just to slit ’em up with a razor, frontwise and from south to north, and not a blessed word spoken. No one’s touched ’im yet, not for efficiency, but this new chap, ’e looks like catching Jack up.Andat Jack’s own game, razor and all. Makes a man fair sick, sir, to see the completed work. Just slits ’em up as clean as you or me might slit up a vealanam-pie. We was laying bets on ’im over at Vine Street only to-night, curious like to see whether ’e’d beat Jack’s record. But it’ll take some beating, I give you my word. Up to date this chap ’as only done in twelve in three weeks—not that that’s ’alf bad, seeing as how ’e’s new to the game, more or less.”
“Oh, rather, more or less!” said Mr. Trevor faintly. “Twelve! Good God—only twelve! But why—why don’t you catch the ghastly man?”
“Ho, why don’t we!” said the policeman. “Becos we don’t know ’ow, that’s why. Not us! It’s the little one-corpse men we’re good for, not these ’ere big artists. Look at Jack the Ripper—did we catch ’im? Did we? And look at Julian Raphael—did we catch ’im? I’m asking you.”
“I know you are,” said Mr. Trevor gratefully. “Thank you.”
“I don’t want your thanks,” said the policeman. “I’m just warning you.”
Mr. Trevor gasped: “Warningme!”
“You’ve said it,” said the policeman. “You don’t ought to be out alone at this time of night, an ’earty young chap like you. These twelve ’e’s already done in were all ’earty young chaps. ’E’s partial to ’em ’earty, I do believe. And social gents some of ’em was, too, with top-’ats to hand, just like you might be now, sir, coming ’ome from a smoking-concert. Jack the Ripper all over again, that’s wot I say. Except that this ’ere new corpse-fancier, ’e don’t seem to fancy women at all.”
“A chaps’ murderer, what!” said Mr. Trevor faintly. “Ha-ha! What?”
“You’ve said it,” said the policeman. “But you never know your luck, sir. And maybe as ’ow thirteen’s your lucky number.”
Mr. Trevor lays emphasis on the fact that throughout he treated the constable with the courtesy due from a gentleman to the law. He merely said: “Constable, I am now going home. I do not like you very much. You are an alarmist. And I hope that when you go to sleep to-night your ears swell so that when you wake up in the morning you will be able to fly straight to heaven and never be seen or heard of again. You and your razors and your thirteens!”
“Ho, they ain’t mine, far from it!” said the policeman, and even as he spoke a voice crashed upon the silence from the direction of Mount Street. The voice belonged to a tall figure in black and white, and on his head was a top-hat that shone under the pallid moon like a monstrous black jewel.
“That there,” said the policeman, “is a Noise.”
“He’s singing,” said Mr. Trevor.
“I’ll teach ’im singing!” said the policeman.
Sang the voice: