“One last word, Osbald. This place isn’t Tremaine. It’s me! You had better stick that in your pipe and smoke it. It’s what I want about the place. See?”
Osbald looked strangely ashamed.
“I see, sir.”
So the struggle between them began, though in old John’s case the turmoil was inward and silent. He had surrendered and he knew it; he had humbled himself in order to stay with his beloved garden. He was an old man, and he had no soul left to him outside those red brick walls; he had grown into the very crevices of the place; he was rooted in it.
As for Sir Percy Prance his attitude to old Osbald was natural and inevitable. This old stump of a man irritated him; it was as though he was always catching his foot against this relic of the past, and yet he did not have the stump grubbed up. That was not his way. It is possible that he proposed to himself that the obstruction should crumble away piecemeal, and that, in a rather ugly sort of fashion he would enjoy the process. Most of his life had been spent in imposing his loud will upon other people.
The Prance family arrived and inserted itself into the new Bassets. My lady was large and equine, and very much “my lady.” There were three scions of the new stock, two young women and a pup. There were chauffeurs, a butler, a footman, a lady’s maid, and four motor-cars and other accessories. During that first winter old John saw the fruit-garden ripped up and replaced by a bright, new, red-surfaced tennis-court.
He groaned and endured. He addressed Florence Prance as “Your ladyship.” He accepted her prancings and her tramplings. His shoulders bowed themselves. He grew morose, and more and more silent.
But every morning he looked up at the great beech tree. “Changes, Old Fagus. You and I together. But I’ll go and you’ll stay. Maybe they’ll grub me up; but you’ll stay on, Old Fagus.”
Spring came, and among other things Sir Percy bought a motor-mower and imposed it upon Bassets and old Osbald. A strong man and a boy had been good enough for the grass of the Tremaines, and to old John the new machine was like some beastly mechanical devil dropped from the planet Mars. Somehow he could not keep it in order, and it was rough in its treatment of his beloved turf. In fact, this noisy, self-assertive machine became associated in old Osbald’s mind with Sir Percy Prance himself.
John might say: “I don’t hold with these new-fangled things,” but he did not say it. He was afraid of the machine; it was a sly and treacherous beast; it was always breaking down, and just as though it did it on purpose. Like Sir Percy it was trying to catch him out.
“You don’t seem to get on very well with that mower, Osbald.”
The old man looked frightened—sulky and frightened.
“I’ll get the hang of it, sir.”
“Perhaps; you’re a bit old to learn.”
Sir Percy was always saying to his wife: “I must get rid of that old fellow. He’s not up to his job. But I’ll give him his chance.”
To Osbald her ladyship was the source of other sorrows. She knew nothing of gardening, but that did not prevent her from assuming that she did. She was devastation. She would send out a maid with a huge basket and a table-knife, and old John’s delphiniums would be cut to the bone. She wanted everything that was new. She would go to flower-shows and nurseries, and come back with pencilled catalogues, and ask John if he had such-and-such a plant. And if not—why not? She hinted that he had never heard of it, that he was ignorant.
She caused a monstrous, rustic pergola to be built right across the sweep of John’s favourite lawn. She had a mess of limestone piled round one of the cedars, and called it a rock garden. She possessed a restless, rooting energy, and no feeling for what was or what had been. And she was quite sure that Osbald was a cantankerous and ignorant old fool.
Now, according to their lights, the Prances were excellent people. They gave to charities, and encouraged trade, and paid their bills, but as for understanding the mystic marriage of mind to matter, that was beyond them. Old John had a wife, but he was married to two entities: his wife and his garden. Nor can such marriages be broken without mortal injury to the souls concerned. Sir Percival might talk with a certain loud assurance about music, but he never credited old John Osbald with a soul, nor did he realize that the old worker was attached inseparably to his garden.
John’s wife knew it. The village knew it. All old men who laboured with their hands, understood this mystical reality.
The garden of Bassets was old John Osbald’s garden. It belonged to him, and he to it. Sir Percival Prance might have paid so much money for the property, but deep down in the soul of the worker was the conviction that the garden was John Osbald’s and not his.
Old John was not a very articulate person, but he could talk to his wife.
“I’ve been made to feel shame, mother, but I reckon I’ve got to swallow it. It’s my job, isn’t it? It’s been my job for forty year.”
She understood him, for was not their home, the cottage beyond the stables, dependent upon the pleasure of this same Percy Prance. Mary felt for her cottage much as John felt for his garden. She had grown into it. It contained the associations of a life-time. It was—her.
So things continued for a season, and old John went about dumbly, and felt the loss of this and of that. He could say to himself: “They haven’t got no feel for the place, but so long as I’m here I’ll make up for it to the garden.” But his sense of insecurity increased. Tranter, the man under him, glib, swarthy, sycophantic, had his eyes on John’s shoes. He knew how to butter a cat’s paws.
Inevitably the situation developed its crisis. Her ladyship was not a lover of trees. She was restless; she had a passion for altering everything that was; she liked to impose her will upon her surroundings. Her disapproval fell upon Old Fagus. The beech tree was superfluous, a nuisance; nothing would grow under it.
She said to Sir Percival: “That tree. It ought to come down.”
Sir Percival agreed with her.
“Shuts out too much sunlight, what! I’ll give Osbald orders. A tree like that’s no use to anybody.”
So the doom of Old Fagus was pronounced, and John Osbald was told by Sir Percival in person that the beech tree was to be felled.
Old John stood and stared. His hands, hanging limply, slowly clenched themselves. He had reached the limits of surrender.
“That there tree, sir, has stood there for two hundred years.”
Sir Percival did not like John’s tone.
“Well, it’s coming down now. You see about it.”
Old John moistened his lips.
“I won’t have no hand in it. I’ve known that tree——”
The crisis was instant.
“You heard my orders.”
“I did, sir.”
“And you refuse?”
“I won’t stand by and see that tree—felled.”
Sir Percival Prance’s ruddy face grew turgid.
“Oh, you won’t! All right, you’ll go. I’ve given you your chance here, Osbald. I’ll pay you to the end of this month.”
John stood stock still.
“That means——”
“Yes, I shall want that cottage. You had better look out for something down in the village.”
Osbald said never a word. But he went and put on his coat, and walked out of the garden, and under the autumn foliage of the beech tree. He looked up at it.
“You’ve stood by me, and I’ve stood by you, Old Fagus.”
He returned to the cottage and his wife.
“I’ve been sacked, mother.”
He sat down in the rush-bottomed chair.
“After forty year. We’ve got to the end of the month. Reckon I’d better go down and see what I can get in the village.”
Old Fagus fell to the axe and the cross-cut saw, and the Osbalds went to live in the village, but since there was no vacant cottage to be had, they were compelled to take lodgings. Old John managed to get one or two odd jobs, and the old people had their pensions, but Osbald did not ke
ep his odd jobs long. He seemed to shrink and to wither up. He lost his straightness, for he had been very straight in the back for a gardener; his head sank and his shoulders sagged. He had come to the end of his job, not happily so, but with a sense of being broken. In a spell of bitter January weather he caught a cold that went to his chest; but the village would not have it that it was the bronchitis that killed him. The village agreed with John’s wife.
“They took the pride of his job away, and I tell ’ee it broke his heart. At his age, too. Things oughtn’t to be done rough like that.”
She did not outlive her man for many months, but died in the fall of the year, and was buried with him in Bury St. James’s churchyard.
Sir Percy Prance, if he thought at all about the matter, considered the business of no importance. He had had to sack an obstinate old man who had become obsolete, and a mere obstructionist. The sycophantic Tranter stepped into Osbald’s shoes, and was known in the village as Jim Lickspittle.
But that was not the end of the chapter. Sir Percy Prance did what he considered to be his duty by the village. He subscribed to this and that; he presented the Bury St. James’s cricket club with a new pavilion; at Christmas he helped to dine the old people and the children. He was under the impression that he was popular in the neighbourhood, though certainly these rustics were a rather glum and silent lot. When her ladyship opened the village flower show the day happened to be wet, and the human atmosphere had a certain dampness. Moreover, Tranter’s exhibits from the Bassets’ garden did not secure a single prize, though the local post-master, an ex-police inspector and the blacksmith were the judges.
Sir Percy was piqued. He could not understand it. He spoke to Tranter about it, and Tranter sneered.
“They’re a nasty, jealous crowd, sir. They just ruled us out.”
Came a day when politics were to the fore. An election was at hand, and Sir Percy, as a good citizen and a man of prominence, assumed the position that was his. Bury St. James was to have a meeting, and the electors were to be addressed by the particular candidate whom Sir Percy favoured. Sir Percy was to take the chair. He assumed that he had every right to occupy that chair.
There were people in the village who knew there would be trouble, and that Bury St. James had been waiting for Sir Percy; but no one attempted to tell him so. The business had been boiling up, but the psychological occasion for an outburst had been lacking. Bury St. James was like a dour, watchful old sheep-dog that went about with its yellow eyes obscurely resentful under a mass of hair. It had not forgotten; it did not forget easily—it waited for the chance to bite.
The meeting was held in the village institute, no objection being raised to the use of the room, since both candidates were to hold meetings in it. It was a winter evening. Sir Percy and Lady Prance dined early, and were driven down in the big limousine. In spite of the night being cold and raw the roadway and the path leading to the village institute were crowded, and it was a crowd that allowed Sir Percy to arrive in silence. Yet, all those obscure figures and faces were mutely attentive, hostility paraded in the darkness, and Sir Percy was not aware of it. He had dined well. He and her ladyship were met at the doorway of the institute by Mr. Marter who kept the village shop, and Mr. Higgs, one of the principal farmers. The room was packed.
Sir Percy and his lady were conducted to the platform. The knight had the air of a well-fleshed and successful man who felt himself lord and master of the occasion. Probably he expected applause, but there was no applause. The room remained strangely silent.
Mr. Marter looked anxious. He was one of those who knew how a working man felt about certain happenings. He could remember the days when a Tremaine had sat in that chair, and a Tremaine had always been listened to. When they reached the platform, Mr. Marter bent forward and whispered to Sir Percy Prance.
“The candidate isn’t here yet, sir. He’s coming on from Thornfield. Do you think we had better wait?”
Prance saw no reason why the meeting should not be opened. He had certain things to say to Bury St. James—loud, sonorous things.
“We may as well begin, Mr. Marter. I’ll address them.”
They mounted the platform, and seated themselves in the row of chairs. Sir Percy Prance looked at his audience, produced his notes, rose, and with a kind of shining, well-fed effulgence, prepared to dominate and to declaim.
Suddenly, from somewhere at the back of the room, a man’s voice broke the silence.
“Who killed old John Osbald.”
For some five seconds the silence held. It was as though a stone had been thrown, and glass had been broken, and then from the back of the room, and from the packed doorway, and from the crowd outside, the voices stormed.
“We don’t want to hear ’ee.”
“Who killed old Osbald?”
“Get out o’ that chair.”
“If ye don’t get out we’ll throw ’ee out.”
People rose to their feet. There was pandemonium. Men surged in, and tried to force their way towards the platform. Women screamed. The roar of voices continued, angry, ugly, unsilenceable. There was no doubt about the threatening sincerity of that country crowd.
Prance stood holding his notes. His face looked turgid and swollen. People saw his lips move. He was trying to say something. He did say something—and he said it with fury.
“It’s a lie. If you fools can’t be quiet——”
He had to be hustled out of the room and by way of the door at the back of the platform. He swore and protested. Two police constables and a few supporters bunched themselves round him, not out of love, but because something had to be done when such a storm broke loose. But they could not get him to his car, for his car had been pushed off the road and upset into a ditch. They smuggled him down the dark path into the churchyard where the old Osbalds lay, and across the churchyard into the vicarage garden. They put him into the vicarage, and went back to rescue the lady.
But when Bury St. James had extruded all that was Prance, it sat down and listened to Mr. Higgs of Tithe Farm, and later it listened to the candidate who had come on from Thornfield to speak to it. Bury St. James had expressed itself. It had fastened its teeth into a certain pair of trousers.
Meanwhile, Sir Percy stood on the vicarage hearthrug and said things to the vicar.
“Your people are a lot of damned savages. Mark you, I’ve done things for them. I’ve been generous. It’s absolutely——”
The vicar, a mild man, lit his pipe. His wife and her ladyship were together in the drawing-room.
“Oh, they take a little knowing, Sir Percy. They don’t see things quite—perhaps—as you see them.”
The knight seemed to swell behind his bulging shirt-front.
“Savages. I wash my hands of the whole damned show. They’ll never get another penny out of me. And that’s that!”
THAT VULGAR PERSON
No one could understand why—when there were at least a dozen hotels in Belleplage—he should have chosen to stay at the Hotel Victoria, for the “Victoria” was eminently and aggressively the English hotel, and though he registered himself as British he did not look English as the Hotel Victoria understood it. His name was Sabbine. He was of a quite extraordinary plainness, and the Hotel Victoria, having prejudices of its own, found his plainness repulsive. Everything about him was ugly: his jowl, his negroid mouth, his complexion suggesting hot moist veal, his large hands, his massive thighs, his feet. He had little dark eyes tucked away in bladders of fat. He had a tummy. Quite inevitably the Hotel Victoria referred to him as “That gross person.”
He appeared as a topical figure, symbol of the New Riches, and probably a profiteer. Obviously he was very well-to-do. He was occupying the best suite in the hotel, and he had a valet. In the dining-room Gustave, the head-waiter, had assigned to Mr. Sabbine the most special corner by the window, with its view of the sea. The Victorians were shocked at Gustave, that he should be so obviously servile and a sycophant in search of tips.
Mrs. Horrocks, who had wintered for fifteen successive years at the Hotel Victoria, and who ran everything in Belleplage: the English church and the chaplain, and the library, and the Society for Salving Russian Refugees, disapproved instantly of Mr. Sabbine. Possibly his name suggested to her that most indecent incident in the history of Rome, and the vulgarities of Rubens. She spoke of him openly as “That gross person.”
Seated at her table, which happened to be too close to Mr. Sabbine, she surveyed him like a desiccated Britannia whose urge was to use her trident, and to pitchfork Mr. Sabbine out into the street.
“I can’t think what the man is doing here.”
Colonel Blenkinsop, to whom everything was either pukkah or pariah, and who managed to be extraordinarily like the French cartoonist’s idea of an Englishman, agreed with Mrs. Horrocks.
“Demned superfluous. A bottle-wallah with diamonds in his shirt-front! I must speak to Muller about it.”
Muller was the manager, and when Colonel Blenkinsop did speak about it, the shrewd Swiss asked to be instructed.
“But what is the objection to the gentleman, sir? He is very quiet.”
Quiet, indeed! Why the loudness of him screamed! But, of course, Muller could not be expected to distinguish such sounds emerging from the person of so profitable a client.
“Just freeze the fellah out.”
That he should arouse such hostility was a subtle challenge to the League of Nations and to all those who preach brotherly love, but Mr. Sabbine appeared unaffected by it. He waddled about with an air of aloof good humour, and refused to be frozen. No one spoke to him save the staff, and he spoke to no-one. And he conveyed to the world of the Hotel Victoria the impression that he was quite aware of the feeling of hostility he aroused, and was amused by it. Not only was he repulsive, but he was repulsively complacent. It was as though he gloried secretly in his grossness.
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 9