The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping

by Warwick Deeping

  I think I sympathized with all of them.

  And then—suddenly—Halberg changed the colour of his carnations. I happened to be at the “Palace” on the night when he appeared with red flowers instead of white. He and the Legros went through the same dumb, staring, triangular contest. He followed them out as usual to their car.

  How and why it happened I do not know. Possibly the colour of the red carnations had a more apoplectic effect upon the old gentleman. He may have been feeling irritable and stormy. I confess that I did decide to go home on the heels of the three, and when I got to the door I found myself the spectator of pitiful and human happenings.

  A powerful electric lamp glared under the glass shell of the hotel porch. Halberg’s bouquet of red carnations lay like a red stain on one of the steps, and I was aware of him as a mute and rigid figure posed half in the light and half in the shadow. The car itself was the centre of a little knot of figures, the chauffeur, the “Palace” concierge, and an under-porter. They were trying to get old Legros out of the car, and I had a glimpse of the face of the girl, a very white still face as she bent forward to try and help them.

  I slipped out into the drive and watched. Halberg remained where he was, a fatal figure observing the tragic outcome of its interference. One of the men climbed into the car, and I saw a limp, bunch of a figure lifted out and carried towards the glass doors. Legros’ wife followed.

  I saw her almost put a foot on Halberg’s carnations, and bridle and step aside as though avoiding a pool of blood. She paused. She seemed to hesitate. Then she bent and picked up the bouquet, took three deliberate steps towards Halberg, and threw the red flowers in his face.

  After that I smothered myself in between the flowering shrubs that edged the drive. I did not want Halberg to see me, or to realize that the climax had been pried upon by other eyes. I saw the girl disappear through the glass doors. Not a word had been uttered. She left Halberg standing there like a man who was so shocked and astonished that he was incapable of movement. I think he must have stood there for quite three minutes, and with so dreadful a stillness that I too was shocked.

  Presently he bent down and picked up the bunch of carnations, holding them flinchingly as though they were white flowers that had been splashed with blood. He had opened the door of a cage, and the bird had flown in his face. Poor, Harmless Satyr! What he did with those fatal flowers I do not know, but he walked off into the night still carrying them. I have a feeling that he went down and threw them into the lake.

  Yet the affair was not to end as it appeared to have ended. Old Legros died on a sofa in the office of the manager of the Palace Hotel, and the body was taken up to the huge, red villa above Chambard. Moreover there must have been someone on the watch in Clareux, some little assiduous relative, for the very next day half a dozen alert French people—four men and two women—all solemnly blacked—invaded the villa above Chambard. They had a lawyer with them. I heard all this afterwards from Halberg himself.

  And the curmudgeonly of old Legros was exposed to the world. That grin of his had not been without significance. He had left his wife ten thousand francs in 3 per cent rentes. Just that! Villa and diamonds, and motor-car and an estate somewhere in the West Indies reverted to a stuffy and sallow-faced French family who owned a velour factory at Amiens.

  The inwardness of women is peculiar. I have often wondered whether the girl knew of the cynicism of old Legros’ will when she threw those red carnations in Halberg’s face. My impression is that she did not. It was the emotional act of an excitable child, a gesture of protest against man’s eternal and sentimental interference.

  She had been far happier in her cage than a man like Halberg could credit, for even a man’s idealism is apt to be so coloured by his consciousness of a woman’s sex that he assumes her to be the victim of fate unless she is busy with husband and babies.

  But to revert to facts. It was the Amiens family who bundled the girl out of the red villa, shood her out of her cage. She had no legal redress. They straight-way handed her over her ten thousand francs—French—and were quit of their responsibilities. No doubt they were immensely relieved. Uncle Legros had had his senile romance, and had behaved in the end like a good Frenchman.

  As usual, it was Jeremy who supplied me with the latest information. It appeared that Legros’ widow had taken refuge in a shabby little hotel—the “Étoile” in one of the streets behind the station. She had perched there like a rather bewildered bird let out of a cage, helplessly free, and with her supply of bird-seed cut off. Poor Halberg had made a bad mess of the liberation.

  But had he?

  Jeremy’s eyes had a human twinkle.

  “He has been patrolling round her hotel like a policeman. Sort of figure of pale and passionate determination—wearing a plush hat. Having let her out he wants to shut her up again.”

  “All men do,” I said.

  And I was permitted to witness the beginnings of the last phase. I had wandered up above Chambard, between tea and dinner, to look at the orchards in bloom and the fields full of flowers, and to watch the sun flush the Savoyard peaks, and on a little path under the cherry trees I saw two figures. They were walking shyly and demurely, like a couple of very proper but unconfessed lovers, tremulous but coy, and no doubt discussing music or the mountains, or perhaps even the rate of exchange. Halberg’s tall figure seemed to overshadow hers. He was carrying his black plush hat in his hand.

  I walked on to meet them.

  He was very correct, very courteous. His pale blue eyes seemed to glimpse something humorous in my appearance, but without realizing what it was. He introduced the girl to me.

  “Yvonne—this is Miss Fraser. Miss Fraser—Madame Legros.”

  We shook hands. She had a wise, shy, gentle look. She did not remind me of the girl who had thrown those flowers in the face of the Harmless Satyr.

  “Mademoiselle is enjoying the sunset?”

  Yes—I admitted that I was enjoying the sunset, and added that I hoped to enjoy my dinner; and after a few more amiable nothings I smiled upon them and passed on.

  My last glimpse of them—as I turned to get a view of the lake—showed them to me standing side by side under a cherry tree. They, too, were enjoying the sunset—and something more than the sunset. It seemed to me that Halberg, devoted, adoring, hat in hand, was tempting her to re-enter the eternal cage.

  TOM SILVER’S BUS

  His wife was troubled about him, for when, after fifteen years of married life, a man becomes moody and strange and sits and stares at the fire and does not always hear what is said to him, a woman begins to ask herself questions.

  The Silvers had no children. They had lived in the same cottage in Paradise Row ever since they had been married, a red brick cottage with a green door and railings, and Tom Silver had always kept the little front garden full of flowers. At the back of Paradise Row ran a branch of the River Bourne, and the strips of ground belonging to the cottages ended in the green of old pollarded willows. The Silvers had in their piece of garden a magnificent old pear tree, all white in the spring, and flaming red and gold in the autumn. Blackbirds loved this tree, and on spring mornings early a cock would usually be singing in it.

  But Mary Silver was troubled.

  For Tom had always been a man of calculable moods and habits, and for years she had had the feeling that she knew all about him that there was to know, but now she was not so sure.

  “Hear the bird, mother?”

  This spring he had not called her attention to the blackbird in the pear tree, nor had he boasted gently about the size of the polyanthus flowers in the patch of front garden. She had seen him standing quite still with his foot on the garden fork, staring at the soil, but not as though he saw anything singular in the soil. He stared at the fire in just the same way.

  Mary would say to herself: “Now, what’s wrong with my Tom?”

  For a deep and sure affection united them, and like many childless people they had grown i
nto and through each other. Silver was a driver-mechanic, and had worked for a dozen years at “Green’s Garage,” in Malton. Old Green thought a lot of him, this silent Tom Silver, blond and fresh-coloured, with blue eyes that were apt to go dreamy, a man who did not like to be talked to when he was at work, and who resented interference. If a sick engine needed a physician, Silver was the man for it. His big, strong, dexterous hands were loving and patient.

  For the job was his, and a mere money-getting world is slow to realize how much the job is part of the worker’s soul. Tom Silver found his secret joy in it, his justification, little strange ecstasies of self-expression. Something clicked to beneath his skilful fingers, or a stammering engine became sweet and alive.

  Always he had come back to Mary with a kind of contentment in his eyes.

  “Tea ready, mother?”

  He had had the air of a man who had completed something, exorcised some little devil of disharmony. The job was good.

  But this spring his eyes had changed. They had a sort of sadness, a perplexity. He did not look at the familiar things about the cottage and garden as he had been accustomed to look at them. He was silent, preoccupied.

  Mary was troubled. She knew her man, and that Tom did not go off round the corner. She had never known him to get silly about a girl, and to come back to her looking sheepishly and deceitfully cheerful. He did not drink; he was not interested in “horses.” He had no worries, save the worries that attach themselves inevitably to the life of a man who works for a weekly wage.

  Was it their lack of children?

  Now between Mary and Tom there had always been a simple and intimate confidence. They had nothing to conceal from each other. They were simple people uttering simple words, and giving expression to their natural feelings. They had become necessary to each other in a way that is not understood by those whose mating has been solely and transiently of the flesh.

  Mary asked her question.

  “What’s worrying you, Tom?”

  He had slipped his feet into his slippers, and was lighting his pipe while she mended the fire. He held the match to the tobacco, and his hand was steady. He neither resented nor shirked her question; he answered it.

  “Blessed if I know, mother.”

  Which was strange, so strange that she stood holding the poker and looking down at him with a puzzled intentness.

  “How can that be?”

  His blue eyes raised themselves to her dark ones.

  “Sounds silly. Yes, I guess it does. But it isn’t exactly worry, mother, it’s a sort of feeling.”

  “A sort of feeling?”

  “Yes—that’s all I can call it.”

  She stirred the fire, and her face was thoughtful. She was wise as to the ordinary problems of a working woman’s life: the rent, the bills, the fear of sickness, a dread of strikes.

  “Nothing wrong at the shop?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No one’s been hurting your feelings?”

  He smiled. He patted her back.

  “No; I’ve no grouse on. It’s a decent shop, and I count a bit with the boss. I’m on the job all the time.”

  She said, gravely and softly:

  “I’ve never known you like this before.”

  He answered her just as simply:

  “Maybe I’m a blooming fool. It’s news to me, mother, but I don’t get the feel I did from handling tools.”

  “You’re fed up?”

  “No; not exactly that. It’s as though something funny was working inside me and couldn’t get out.”

  Now this might have seemed a strange confession for a working-man to make, and a woman less wise than Mary Silver might have been sceptical, but Tom was not the sort of man who boiled over like some fussy little kettle. There was something funny and restless inside him, and what exactly—was it? He could not give it a name, and an unnamed thing casts a shadow.

  “Is it something you want and haven’t got, Tom?”

  “I don’t know, old girl.”

  “Is it because I haven’t given you children?”

  He looked up suddenly at that. He reached out and drew her against him.

  “No; nothing that touches you, mother. I know what I’ve got. It’s just a sort of restlessness. Don’t you worry.”

  But Mary did worry, though she worried in secret; for she had a feeling that her man was not happy, and when he was not happy, no blackbird sang for her in the pear tree. But what was the matter with him? He had a good job; he was respected. When anything difficult had to be done at the garage Tom Silver was turned loose upon it. That sort of pride mattered to a man like Tom; and yet, as she watched him, it seemed to her that the pride had gone out of him. He was less taut about the shoulders. A vague listlessness possessed him.

  She lay awake at night, worrying. She even wondered whether Tom was ill, and whether this moodiness was a symptom, the first shadow of some insidious, creeping sickness. She lay and listened to his breathing, but Tom slept as he had always slept.

  Tom Silver knew one thing, he had lost the joy of his hands. He could not say how or why. The strange inwardness of the change was beyond him—that steel should have become dead metal, and an engine a mere machine. The wrench and the drill and the pliers, the reamer, the hack-saw and the hammer did not leap lovingly into his hands. There were days when he was short of temper. He would curse, and in cursing begin to fume and to fumble. Something was out of gear between Tom Silver and his craft.

  Then, one evening, looking at the faces of the pansies in his garden, he remembered.

  “Funny little devils! They’re alive, just like people.”

  Yes; he remembered. His discontent had dated from that day when there had been a smash in the London road in front of him, and he had gone to help and had found himself helpless. A woman was screaming. She lay there by the kerb, all bloody. And he had stood and stared. The job had beaten him.

  He went into the cottage. His eyes had a strange look. He spoke to Mary, who was putting fresh buttonholes into a shirt.

  “I’ve got it, mother.”

  “What, my dear?” For there were times when she called him “my dear” like a child.

  “It isn’t steel; it’s flesh.”

  She waited upon this strange saying.

  “A machine’s a dead thing. I haven’t got the hands for a thing that’s alive.”

  He went on to tell her about the smash in the London road. He had been in charge of a private car for the day, driving two ladies up to town; they were going to a theatre. His blue eyes seemed to be looking at the things he described; his big hands rested on his knees.

  “It gave me a sort of shock, mother. I was shaky for the rest of the drive. I think it’s been on my mind, made me sort of discontented.”

  “But it wasn’t your job, Tom. You can’t blame yourself.”

  His blue eyes stared.

  “Well, that’s so. But somehow—I seemed to feel that it was the sort of job I wanted to be able to tackle. It wasn’t that I was afraid of it. I didn’t just know how to tackle it.”

  “It’s a doctor’s job, my dear.”

  “In a manner of speaking—yes, old girl. When a machine goes wrong, it’s been my job to help to put it right. But a body’s more than a machine. I’m always seeing that poor lady lying screaming in the road, and me as helpless as one of those rich young boobs who hog it in high-powered cars and can’t do more than lift the bonnet flap when something goes wrong.”

  She nodded her head at him.

  “You want to get to know?”

  “That’s it, mother.”

  Knowing him as she did Mary was not surprised when little red books appeared in the cottage, and her man sat at night studying them. She consented. Tom had always been a man for teaching himself things. He was thorough—through and through. He would spread out diagrams on the kitchen table, and go to the trouble of making large copies of them in blue and red chalk. He hung these diagrams on the bedroom door, and stood
and studied them when he was dressing in the morning.

  He was teaching himself the anatomy of the human body as he had taught himself the anatomy of cars. He could have talked to Mary about the brachial and the femoral arteries, and what you might be able to do when a fellow got his throat cut on the jagged glass of a broken windscreen, but he was not a talkative person. Bandages appeared in the cottage, and at night his wife would humour him and pull off her shoe, and allow him to make use of her leg. She would sit and sew and watch his serious, absorbed face, and his deliberate and dexterous fingers.

  One day he came back with the strangest of purchases, an awkward looking object in a sack. Using the backyard as an operating theatre he extracted the object from the sack. He explained the affair to Mary.

  “I had to drive old Mr. Morriaty over to that sale at Milford. He said to me: ‘Tom, I shall be here most of the day. You had better amuse yourself, somehow.’ I had a look over the house, and there was this doll shoved away in a job lot. I had a brain wave, mother, and I bought it.”

  He exhibited his purchase, a battered lay-model such as is used by artists. Its articulated limbs could be set in any position, and to Tom Silver it would serve as a model of the human figure.

  “I can work on it, mother; practise putting up fractures.”

  Tom’s dummy was put to live in the tool-shed at the end of the garden, and on summer evenings Tom would get busy on “Cuthbert,” as he called the creature. He applied splints and bandages to fractured legs and thighs and arms, and Cuthbert was a model patient. He never struggled or made a fuss.

  Mary bore with her man’s obsession. She could not see that it was going to have any practical bearing on life, or that Tom would be able to exercise his new craft in the world of reality. But he was absorbed in it; it seemed to have cured his restlessness. He had ceased to sit and stare.