The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping

by Warwick Deeping

  “Probably.”

  “Let’s go and sit by the lake. I have something to tell you. I suppose I may tell you.”

  He was strapping up his collection of books, and I smiled over him.

  “I suppose you may, if it is not about a third person.”

  He bushed his eyebrows at me.

  “Of course it’s about a third person. It always is, isn’t it? I don’t go in for confessionals.”

  It was about Halberg. We sat on an iron seat under the drooping gold of a weeping willow, and looked across the blue lake at the mountains of Savoy. Jeremy could sit for an hour and stare at these mountains as though he was considering how each one could be climbed. He had a very serious face this morning, for he was confronting the tragedy of a man’s life.

  “Suppose I can tell you.”

  “I suppose that depends——”

  “You are the one woman in this place who doesn’t reduce life to gossip. Gossip is talking about other people’s frailties and troubles—without any decent human feeling for them. Like turning over odds and ends of meat in a butcher’s shop. Life’s a serious business.”

  “In this case—would the third person mind?”

  “I don’t think he would. Not you. Besides the poor beggar is very plucky and big about it.”

  “A woman?”

  “Oh—of course.”

  “Not inevitable—you know. Well——?”

  Jeremy rested his elbows on his knees.

  “Oh—well—quite an unusual sort of tale. But is anything usual when you know one of the characters? Halberg had a young wife—a sort of pretty canary in a cage—I should imagine——”

  I was inwardly startled.

  “A canary?”

  “That’s how I sense it. Well, he went to the war, and was taken prisoner by the Russians, and shut up for three years in a damned wire cage. And presently his wife’s letters ceased—and when he got back to Germany—after the war——”

  “The canary’s cage was empty?”

  Jeremy gave one of his characteristic grunts.

  “That’s the long and short of it,” he said.

  So that was how a woman and the war had treated my poor Harmless Satyr, leaving him no doubt with that peculiar and secret feeling of humiliation that such an affair produces in a man. I have Jeremy’s word for that. A man loves both his wife and himself, and his self-regard may be interwoven with his love for the woman. Strip out that love from the pattern and you leave the man’s pride all shreds and tatters.

  “Poor Halberg! With his pale and gentle eyes.”

  Jeremy grunted.

  “Don’t be sentimental. The fellow’s better off as he is. He’s not shut up in a cage.”

  “No, my dear, but he may be horribly lonely. All men are not predestined bachelors——”

  “You’re wrong there, if you are being personal. If my confounded pension weren’t so paltry——”

  I laughed, but Jeremy did not know what I was laughing at. Moreover it was not unkind laughter, though how many “little pretties” he would have collected during his earthly course had his income been adequate, is a question for the people who can calculate probabilities.

  But I don’t think either of us foresaw the ultimate adventure.

  Herr Halberg and I met fairly regularly at the Kursaal and I supposed that he was still wandering round Clareux and its neighbouring villages looking for birds to liberate. It struck me that his Northern eyes were even more dreamy, and that music was even more intimately his. We should not have found out—perhaps—what was happening had not Jeremy been dragged off to dance at the Clareux Palace Hotel by a young thing who had to dance with somebody.

  I met him next day. He had an air of mystery. He asked me if I ever went to the Palace dances. They were held twice a week.

  “Why should I?”

  “It would be worth your while to see the young fools doing that new dance.”

  “The Charleston?”

  “Believe that’s it. I call it leg-waggling.”

  “Why don’t you take me?”

  “I will—if you like.”

  Half Europe and a part of America must know the “Palace” at Clareux. It is huge and obvious and expensive and comfortable, as efficient an establishment as that most efficient little country can show. That it lacked “atmosphere” was a matter of no importance. The cuisine, the tennis-courts, the dance floor, and the orchestra were the fundamentals. I don’t know why, but the “Palace” at Clareux always made me think of a French cemetery, with its pompous little graves decorated with horrible bead wreaths and crosses, and framed photographs of the departed. Even the garden on the edge of the lake was as artificial as one of the shops where they sell you cheap china and picture-postcards, and little wooden chalets and boxes covered with shells.

  Jeremy and I wandered in about nine o’clock. I went to the cloak-room, and he waited for me in the broad gallery between the lounge and the ballroom. The orchestra was playing dance music, and half a dozen couples were walking busily up and down the polished vastness of the floor. When I rejoined Jeremy I found that he had taken possession of a settee and a table in the lounge.

  “I’ve ordered coffee. Will you have a liqueur?”

  “No, just coffee, thank you.”

  But I was wondering why he had chosen the lounge when there were a dozen vacant chairs in the ballroom, and we had come to watch the young things “leg-waggling.” True, I had a view through one of the big doorways, and I could look along one half of the ballroom, but I did not understand why the show should be split in half for me.

  He appeared to divine my inward protest.

  “You’ll understand in a minute or two. I have brought you here to see something else. We don’t want to be too obvious.”

  “Why so secretive?”

  “Oh, well; you wait and see.”

  “Nothing to observe at present?”

  “Yes, part of the show. Just look straight ahead and tell me if anything catches your eye.”

  At the far end of the ballroom, and close to a group of palms and the orchestra’s grand piano I saw two people seated in gilded and red velvet chairs. They sat side by side, within a foot of each other, staring straight down the room like a couple of royal supers posed on a stage.

  The man was very old. He had a bush of white hair standing up fiercely on his square head; the corners of his hard mouth curved down to form a circle with his prominent chin. His eyes had a peculiar, set, glassy stare; they were both dead and very alive. A couple of sticks were tucked in beside him. He had the biggest hands that I have ever seen, and they rested on his thighs like the paws of some grim old animal.

  He looked French, and yet not quite French, whereas the girl who sat beside him was neither white nor brown, but an exquisite, soft blending of the two. She should have worn a wreath of exotic flowers. Her eyes were like the eyes of a gentle animal, large, brown, and a little frightened. She was dressed in some saffron-coloured stuff, with a necklace of magnificent diamonds round her slim throat. She sat beside that rather terrible old man as though chained to his chair.

  I glanced at Jeremy.

  “Those two figures?”

  He nodded.

  “At twenty-five one would have said father and daughter. But—at fifty-five——”

  “That’s so.”

  “Abominable! Who are they?”

  Jeremy was lighting a cigar.

  “Old chap’s French, colonial, Guadeloupe or Martinique or somewhere. Name of Legros. Beastly rich. Yes; that’s his wife.”

  “Mixed blood somewhere?”

  “Obviously. Pretty thing. Much too pretty for that old ogre. They tell me he never lets her out of his sight.”

  “Jeremy,” I said, “how do you get hold of all this gossip?”

  “It isn’t gossip,” he retorted. “I picked up the human facts from a fellow at the club who is staying here at the ‘Palace.’ I was watching ’em the other night when I was dancin�
�� here. They just sit like that. They never seem to speak to each other or to anybody, and nobody speaks to them.”

  “Your ogre doesn’t look very approachable. But the girl——”

  “They tell me that nobody is allowed to speak to her. If anyone tries to—that old curmudgeon growls like a dog with a bone. Well, here we are.”

  He pointed with his cigar, and I saw Halberg pass along the broad space between the lounge and the ballroom like a man passing across a stage. He was wearing a black overcoat over evening dress. In his left hand he carried his black plush hat, in the other a bouquet of white carnations. It struck me that he had a rapt, visionary look. He disappeared in the direction of the cloak-room, and when he reappeared he was still carrying the carnations. He did not see us. In fact he had the air of seeing nobody. He went and sat down at a little table just inside the ballroom, and I could see the back of his head and three-quarters of his thin, flat back. He placed his bouquet carefully on the table.

  I glanced inquiringly at Jeremy.

  “Is he part of the play?”

  And Jeremy nodded.

  “He was here the other night. He has that table reserved for him. They tell me that he has been here every night.”

  “And the carnations?”

  “Yes, every night he has a bunch of carnations.”

  “And presents them to somebody?”

  “No, takes them away with him. Can’t bring himself to the sticking point, I suppose.”

  “How quaint! I wonder—— Who is it?”

  “That’s what everybody is wondering. Personally—I have a sort of idea—that it is that Creole girl.”

  “Oh, come now! Poor Halberg!”

  “Well, she looks rather like a bird in a cage, doesn’t she?”

  I was startled. I had not believed Jeremy’s blue eyes to be capable of such vision, but no sooner had he made the suggestion than I realized its significance. It was possible that my Harmless Satyr with his passion for opening prison doors had discovered a human thing in a cage, a gentle, wide-eyed creature, mute and chained.

  “Jeremy,” I said, “do you really think——?”

  He nodded his white head.

  “A fellow who can sit for five hours and listen to Wagner! A chap who lets birds out of cages. An idealist! The most dangerous people on earth. Explosive. Besides—they imagine things. I daresay he imagines that girl—a victim——”

  “Isn’t she?”

  “Nonsense. She has plenty to eat and plenty to wear; and look at her diamonds.”

  “You can’t talk materialism to me, my dear. I know you too well. But these Legros people, are they living here?”

  “Not in the hotel. The old chap has a huge villa up on the high ground between Chambard and the lake. He just brings the girl out on a chain. Big closed car. Suppose he likes showing her off. Old Sultan.”

  All this time I was watching the back of Halberg’s head and the faces of Monsieur Legros and his wife. Halberg sat as still as a stone faun, with the bouquet of white carnations lying on the table in front of him, but I had a feeling that his eyes were fixed steadily upon the old man and the girl. People were dancing. Their figures kept moving across my field of vision, and the flow of their movements seemed to emphasize the stillness of the two figures in the red velvet chairs.

  The old man sat and glared like a wax figure with fatal eyes. The girl never moved an eyelash. She sat as though under a spell, a frozen princess with the warm life in her glowing but congealed. The music was persuasive. Even my old feet felt rhythmical, but there was not a flicker of those little saffron-coloured shoes.

  “Jeremy,” I said suddenly, “go and get Halberg.”

  He gave me a queer look.

  “Nothing doing, dear lady——”

  “I’m horribly afraid he’ll make a fool of himself.”

  “Men will. Look out!”

  For old Legros had made a movement. He had put his two huge hands on the gilded arms of the chair. His square, creased face expressed will force, effort. I saw the girl give a startled glance at him, rise quickly, and put herself behind his chair. Her hands slipped under his arms. She helped him up, and he stood on his feet, slouching rather like a huge old ape. She put his two sticks into his hands, and slowly—very slowly—they came down the long room together, he—with a kind of terrible and defiant grin on his face, she—like a sleep-walker.

  I watched Halberg. He sat there with stiff shoulders. His right arm hung at his side, and I saw the fingers of his right hand make a slight, twitching movement as though to grasp the frame of the chair. My impression was that he was looking at the girl. Anyhow they went past him, and he did not stir, the old man with that defiant grin still on his face, the girl—wide-eyed and frightened. I saw Halberg’s chin jerk round, and that queer profile of his very white and set.

  The girl had her cloak with her, a black velvet thing. She put it on as she and old Legros went slowly over the pile carpet towards the glass doors of the vestibule. They disappeared from my view, and turning to glance again at Halberg, I saw him snatch up his bunch of carnations, rise, and go stalking with a kind of fierce stiffness in the direction of the vestibule.

  Without moving, and without looking at him I spoke in a whisper to Jeremy. I knew that half the hotel had been watching Halberg.

  “Go after him—stop him.”

  And this time he went, getting up with an air of English casualness, and pausing for a moment to simulate interest in an Argentino boy who was tangoing with the dancing instructress. He disappeared, and I sat praying that Halberg would not make a scene, or that Jeremy would waylay him before he could begin fumbling with bird-cages. Jeremy had left his cigarette case on the table, and I purloined a cigarette, and sat smoking.

  I had half finished the cigarette before Jeremy returned. He strolled across to the table with his hands in his pockets, his red face studiously blank. He beckoned to a waiter and ordered a whisky and soda. He sat down.

  “Halberg’s gone.”

  “What, minus overcoat and hat?”

  “Yes, and it’s raining. By George—what a chap!”

  His blue eyes were very serious.

  “What do you think he did?”

  “Be quick,” I said.

  “Dashed out just when their car was moving off, and threw those white carnations in at the window. I was watching him through the glass doors.”

  I crushed out the lighted stump of the cigarette.

  “You ought to have stopped him.”

  “Thank you! But how was I to know that the mad idiot——? Besides——”

  “That old fellow may burst a blood vessel.”

  “By Jove,” said Jeremy with an air of sudden and extraordinary brightness, “why—that would do the trick, wouldn’t it? Supposing Halberg’s not so mad? There’s a kind of madness——”

  I sat and stared at the dancers. It occurred to me that there may be other ways of getting rid of an old watch-dog besides the throwing of poisoned meat.

  Of course Halberg had no right to assume that because a pretty girl is married to an old curmudgeon like Legros, she is a bird in a cage and predestined to be rescued, though I do believe that Halberg’s inspiration was absurdly disinterested. A caged bird or a chained soul roused him to action. It was as though three years of heartbreak in a wire cage had accumulated in him such a head of passionate rage against all cruelty and oppression that his reaction against them had become instinctive. Idealism has one blind eye, and Halberg’s blind eye was turned upon Legros.

  The old man was a monster, a jailor, a wrinkled old vampire sucking the blood of youth. Halberg—the Northern hero—had no more pity for him than had Siegfried for the dragon. But here was my poor Harmless Satyr innocently proving himself to the world’s eyes just what he was not, a Pan in pursuit of the nymph, of a nymph mated to a very grim old Silenus.

  The lord of the villa above Chambard might dodder on two sticks, but he too was something of an original. I suppose that wh
en Halberg’s white bouquet came tumbling into the car there was very little said. I could imagine old Legros picking up the bouquet, and with a grin—presenting it to his wife.

  “Accept these tributes, my dear. Let us amuse ourselves with this idiot.”

  Anyway, that was what his subsequent behaviour suggested. Shut his wife up behind the gates of the villa? Not he! For when a man remains masterful and potent to the end and has had some woman trailing dutifully at his heels, he does not surrender to the Halbergs.

  Old Legros brought his Yvonne down to the “Palace,” and sat with her in the same velvet chairs, and stared with his glassy and fatal eyes at Halberg who persisted in placing himself at that table by the door. They confronted each other across the polished floor. As for the girl—she looked just as she had looked on the first night, a dusky victim, but how much a victim who can say?

  And as though to dip irony in sentiment the girl wore each night in her dress a few of Halberg’s white carnations. For each night he arrived with his bouquet, and sat there stiff and white and solitary. Whether it was shyness, or self-restraint, or inherent delicacy of feeling I do not know, but he never made a public offering of his flowers, though he might easily have contrived some sort of introduction. He and old Legros sat and stared at each other. And every night—I believe—a white bouquet came tumbling into the Frenchman’s car.

  Such a situation could not continue. No doubt my poor Harmless Satyr became more humanly involved than was satisfying to a disinterested inspiration. I suppose he fell in love with Legros’ wife. He seemed to grow thinner and paler. I would meet him walking at a great rate round the lake, skirting the edge of a new tragedy.

  Always he would seem glad to see me. He would stop and stand holding his hat in his old courteous and gentle way, and sometimes I saw him at the Kursaal. Of Jeremy I think he saw very little, for Jeremy was shy of people who—as he expressed it—“Were baying the moon.” For, apparently, Halberg would go wandering in the hotel garden at eleven o’clock at night, and talk to himself and the stars when Jeremy—who had a room on the first floor above the garden—was trying to get to sleep. It annoyed Jeremy that a man should be such an ass, and so disturbing an ass.

  “My dear lady, one doesn’t expect to have a Hamlet under your window; no, not in these days, with trams scrooping on the other side of the house. It is no comfort to me to hear a chap saying to the Swiss night—‘She has taken my flowers.’ Damn it! it’s too much like Italian opera. I have begun to feel a sort of sympathy for old Legros.”