Suddenly I sat forward in my chair, listening. A sound had come to me out of the night, a sound that seemed to send a mysterious tremor through my body. There was laughter down there in the woods, mad and vibrant laughter that made me picture some wild man leaping and dancing under the trees. There was something so primitive about it, so faunlike that I could imagine myself back in the dim and pagan past, and waiting to see Pan push his grotesque head from behind some tree.
The laughter came nearer. I leant forward with my arms on the window sill, my skin all aprickle with a sense of cold. Then there was silence, quite a long silence. I had almost begun to doubt whether I had really heard that laughter when I caught a sound that made me lean forward out of the window. Something was running up one of the paths and with quick, padding footsteps, and a patter that only naked feet could make.
Something appeared in the moonlight, leaping up the white steps of the terrace, a half-naked figure in a coat of skins. Its right hand waved a branch that had been torn from a tree; its head seemed to rock between its great brown shoulders.
It was Jerram.
He came loping across the terrace and entered the house. Next moment I was across the room with my hand on the door-handle. I opened the door about an inch and stood listening, and presently I heard those naked feet on the stairs. They passed along the gallery to the east wing of the house. I heard a door open and close. Then there was silence.
“The man’s mad,” I said to myself.
I half dressed myself, and leaving my door ajar, sat in the chair for the rest of the night.
At breakfast I found myself alone with Musgrave, but I could not make up my mind to tell him what I had seen, and Jerram joined us before the end of the meal. There was something strange about the man. He sat and glared, and said nothing; but now and again a smile would break out on his face—the brutish smile of a Caliban.
I loitered about, waiting for Netta. She came down with Millie Cumberbatch, and she gave me no chance to speak with her alone. The whole house-party collected with desultory leisureliness in chairs on the terrace. We lounged and gossiped, and discussed Jerram’s programme for the day, and the grotesque fooling that might be expected. He had disappeared, and was supposed to be writing letters.
Backhouse, Haines and two of the girls were talking of a mixed four at tennis, but they were still in their deck-chairs, dallying with the idea, when Ambrose Jerram joined us. His ugly face looked sly, elvish and mischievous, but there was more than mischief in his tawny eyes. He had a number of slips of paper in his hand.
“May I explain the day to the inmates of the asylum?”
Blare glanced at him from his long cane-chair.
“You won’t expect me to run about, Jerram? I detest running about.”
Jerram handed him one of the slips of paper.
Blare looked at it.
“Gonzalo. That’s a heavy, ponderous part!”
“You can lie under a tree and be prosy.”
Jerram distributed the remaining slips of paper. Netta was to be Miranda; Musgrave, Prospero; Agatha Western, Ariel; Backhouse, Alanso; Haines, Antonio; and so on. I read Ferdinand on my slip, and sat searching for Jerram’s motive in linking me with Miranda.
“Yes, and who is Caliban? Who is to be Caliban?”
The whole group joined in the question.
Jerram looked.
“Being the ugliest of you all, I have reserved the part for myself.”
From that moment I began to glimpse the sinister possibilities that were working in this madman’s brain.
He stood in the midst of us.
“Neo-Shakespeareans—all—we are not so mad as Shakespeare. At four o’clock the bell will ring, and this landscape will become the island. Prospero’s cell is the boathouse by the pool, but no one is under any obligation to follow Shakespeare. You can dress as you please, go where you please, play your parts as you please.”
Blare sat up.
“That’s an idea. We originate, eh?”
“Quite so; Mr. Orchardson will make what he pleases of Ferdinand. I shall make what I please of Caliban. Musgrave will modernize Prospero.”
“Do we go out in a procession, or each as the whim jumps?”
“Each one goes out alone.”
“What a game of hide and seek! But supposing that we never find each other?”
“That should add to the originality of it,” said Jerram; “even Ariel may not be able to persecute Caliban.”
He bowed to us all with flamboyant archness.
“Miranda, Ceres, Juno and the nymphs will be preoccupied with the question of clothes. After lunch we will all of us remain invisible——”
“But what about the tempest?” drawled Blare; “can’t you raise some thunder.”
“Take an umbrella with you, my dear man, and use your imagination.”
None of us saw Jerram again. He walked down the steps into the garden and disappeared. I loitered near Netta, and just before the luncheon bell rang Millie Cumberbatch gave me my opportunity.
“Where are we to meet,” I asked her.
“Do we meet?”
“If you are Miranda and I am Ferdinand——”
“Oh, it is all altered; we follow our own inclinations. Miranda may improve upon the play.”
There was no impishness in Netta’s eyes this morning, though she was ready to tantalize me with her playfulness. Something had happened to her. She was serious below the surface, a little distraught, a little less sure of herself and her surroundings. I thought that I saw a glimmer of friendliness in her eyes.
“Then you will not quarrel with me,” I asked her, “if I follow my inclination?”
“May I ask what it will be?”
“That silly old sentiment we call chivalry.”
Her long black lashes hid her eyes. The bell rang, and she rose.
“I shall run away,” she said, “and play hide and seek.”
She looked quickly at the others, and then added in an undertone:
“But keep near me; I would like to have you near me.”
I think she had begun to be a little afraid of Jerram.
At four o’clock I was sitting on the terrace steps, dressed in my green satin court suit, and wondering what was going to happen. I was in a supercilious mood, and quite convinced that there were the makings of a tragedy in the deeps of those great woods. I had seen Jerram as Caliban, and I could not forget his laughter. I did not mean to let Netta out of my sight, and there was a devout rage at the back of my thoughts.
I did not see any of the others, save Blare and Mrs. Erskine who passed me on the steps, Mrs. Erskine dressed as a Watteau shepherdess, Blare looking like a sort of bored Svengali in a black velvet coat. Agatha Western, Haines, Backhouse and the rest had caught the spirit of the adventure and had gone off different ways. I waited there for Netta.
She came out to me in a loose robe of deep, rose-coloured silk. Her honey-coloured hair hung in a tawny mass. She wore sandals on her little white feet.
“Are you ready?”
I stood up and bowed to her, and she must have seen all that was in my eyes.
“Do you think that Miranda was like this, Josh?”
“No,” I said; “I don’t. What a loathsome name that is of mine.”
She smiled, half shy, half mischievous.
“It is an honest name—I think I rather like it. But what would be the difference between me and Miranda?”
“It’s so obvious. You would have made Miranda look an utter Victorian.”
“Thank you, Josh,” she said.
We went down together through the garden and into the park where the shadows of the trees were beginning to lie with long gentleness upon the grass. A path led down through the woods to the boat-house by the pool, and we found Musgrave and Mrs. Erskine there sitting in the punt and abusing the flies.
“You are a pretty Prospero,” said Netta, “a magician worried by midges! Has anyone seen Caliban?”
> Musgrave looked bored.
“I’ve seen nothing but Blare. He had forgotten his matches and wanted to borrow mine.”
There was a canoe in the boat-house. I persuaded Netta into it, and we paddled about for half an hour among the waterlilies and the reeds. Then she protested that we were not helping the others to evolve a masterpiece and we landed in the beech wood on the other side of the pool.
We must have wandered about for an hour, and we saw no one, but all the time I had a most strange feeling that we were being watched. This beech wood stretched for a mile or more, a mile of shadows and of mystery, with its wayward paths in and out among the trunks of the great trees. The silence was extraordinary, yet once or twice I thought I heard a rustling of dead leaves.
“It is like the world before time was,” she said.
And suddenly a spirit of mischief woke in her. She shook her hair at me in the deepening gloom of the woodland evening.
“We haven’t escaped yet. I am still Netta Rainsford and you are Josiah Orchardson, two dull twentieth century people. Let’s go back, back to the beginning of things.”
“All right,” I said, “what is it to be?”
“Hide and seek. I am a wild woman——”
She laughed and ran up the path.
“Give me three minutes, and then come and find me.”
I watched her disappear into the shadows, and when she was lost in them a great uneasiness seized me. I could not explain it, but the feeling was so strong in me that before a minute had passed I was following her up the path.
“Netta,” I shouted, “where are you?”
I stood still, listening. The foliage of the beeches was growing dusky in the twilight, and here and there a patch of deep blue sky showed between the branches. The place seemed a great smothering mystery, a net, a maze in which we were entangled. I shouted again and had no answer.
I ran on, with a vision in my mind of Jerram as I had seen him the night before.
Suddenly I stood still. I heard a movement of the wood, a cry, and then laughter, laughter that made me bristle.
I could see nothing but the trees.
“Netta,” I shouted.
Next moment I heard her cry to me for help.
“Josh—Josh—oh! be quick——”
Something smothered her cry, but I was running like a madman in the direction from which it had come. The luck of the gods was with me.
A little glade opened in front of me, and half way down it I saw the brown-black figure of a man running with Netta in his arms. I saw her head hanging and her fair hair atrail, and the brawny breadth of the man’s back.
The anger of the gods was in me. It was a love chase, and Jerram was hindered by having Netta in his arms. I saw her look back over his right shoulder, and I caught the mad flare of his eyes. I was closing in on him, and he knew that he could not escape.
I was within ten yards of Jerram when he flung Netta down and turned on me. He had flung her down brutally, and she did not move.
“Ho—lo—Caliban.”
He roared and came at me like a wild beast, and the anger in me blessed God for his madness. I knew that he was stronger than I was, but then I knew things that Jerram did not know. My anger was a sword against the club of his brute madness.
He came in swinging his arms, and I let him come till he was almost clawing me, and then I struck and sent him down. He was up again, squealing with fury, but he was a child with his fists and his rushes were easily countered. I kept clear, using my feet, and working for the blow that should knock him out. He had the head of a negro, and I could have pummelled it all day. I was waiting for that blow on the throat, and when I gave it him, full on the larynx, he crumpled up and lay choking.
Netta was sitting up, dazed, her eyes big with fear. She stretched out her arms to me.
“Oh, Josh! take me away.”
I picked her up in my arms, and with a look at Caliban, who was still sprawling and coughing on the ground, carried her through the beech wood towards the pool. Her right arm was round my neck, her head on my shoulder.
“I won’t quarrel with you again, Josh,” she said; “please let me walk now.”
I set her on her feet, but she kept hold of my hand. It was growing very dark under the trees and she drew close to me. I put my arm round her.
“Josh,” she said.
“My darling!”
“I thought I was so clever, so modern. You will take me back to town to-night?”
“Of course. I’m your——”
She laid her fingers on my mouth.
“Dear, old-fashioned, romantic lover! Oh, stay like that, Josh. I know now what a woman asks for, to be able to trust to a man’s strength and honour.”
I kissed her fingers.
“Often—you will think me a fool, dear.”
“Never,” she said.
NOISE
Sefton had come to Rome.
He had come because he had been a sick man and was not allowed to winter in England, and because he was poor, and was engaged in writing a masterpiece.
He had taken Holford’s advice. Holford was one of those healthy, full-noon, confident fellows who know nothing of sickness or the writing of novels, and who could live serenely in the room next to a French lady who kept a poodle, a highly scented laugh, and a selection of lovers.
Holford had said: “That’s it: go to Rome. I know the very hotel for you. Room on the fourth floor—view of the Borghese. You’ll write great stuff in Rome. They know me at the ‘Paradiso.’ Mention my name.”
Holford appeared to have been everywhere. Had Sefton said that he was going to Timbuctoo, Holford would have advised him—“Timbuctoo, just the place. Put up at the ‘Palm Tree.’ Mention my name.”
Sefton took Holford’s advice and chose the Paradiso. He was given his room on the fourth floor, a little pink tank with a high door and a high window, and a view that held him in exquisite, eager gazing. He thought: “How splendid. I shall be able to write here. Holford does know a thing or two.”
He settled himself in. He arranged a little table near the window. He found that when he sat at the table he had only to raise his eyes, and the greenness of the Borghese was spread above the redness of the Aurelian wall. It was very beautiful, but it would not distract him. Trees understand thought.
This upper floor of the Paradiso seemed very quiet. He decided to begin work after tea, and he went down and had tea in the lounge, and then ascended to that upper chamber. He was full of contentment, and at peace with the world.
But Sefton had failed to notice a door half way down the corridor shutting off a portion of the fourth floor, and when he reclimbed the stairs that door was open and another world revealed itself, a world that had been deceitfully silent during the earlier part of the afternoon. Sefton received a shock. The voices of two strapping young Italian women reverberated in the corridor. A small boy was pushing a wooden horse up and down. Two small girls were in the midst of an argument over the possession of a brown bear. There were sudden screams. Somewhere an infant was hammering the top of a tin box. The two nurses adjourned for a moment to deal with the squabbling pair upon the floor, and then resumed their vigorous discussion.
Sefton hesitated. He was a rather shy person. Then he went into his room and closed the door, and filled a pipe and sat down at his table and looked at the green and tranquil trees. The situation was unexpected. He ventured to suppose that the two Italian women would exhaust their vocal energy in the course of a few minutes, and that the door would be closed, and some peace return.
He picked up his pen and sat poised.
But he did not know the Latin race. The door remained open, and the argument continued. So did the infant playfulness. It had the inevitableness of youth.
Sefton began to fidget. He heard loud, admonishing exclamations. Hercules was addressed repeatedly. Hercules appeared to be the small boy with the wooden horse. He was a vigorous child.
“Hercules! Her
cules! do not pull Maria’s hair.”
Then an infant began to give tongue, and one of the young women collected it and began to prance up and down the corridor, uttering strident and soothing noises and such language as all women use on these occasions. It was all very domesticated and natural, but not conducive to the production of literature, and Sefton began to be irritated. He got up and opened his door, and glared at the Italian woman with the baby. She took no notice of him at all.
Something would have to be done. Obviously. He closed his door, and went downstairs and sought out the manageress in her office. She was a little dark, compact person, suave, but with the beady and determined eye. Sefton was polite.
“Madam, you told me it was quiet on the fourth floor.”
Madam looked surprised.
“Why, yes, it is very quiet.”
“But—the children.”
Madam looked yet more surprised.
“Why, yes, the children. But does monsieur object to children?”
Sefton felt himself accused, challenged by the basic sentiment of humanity.
“Unfortunately—I have to work.”
“But there is a door; it is kept closed.”
“It is not closed now.”
“Monsieur can close it, if it is left open.”
This was infinite condescension, but Sefton hesitated. He did not feel satisfied.
“Possibly you have another room?”
“The hotel is full. There will be no room vacant for a week.”
Sefton returned to the fourth floor. Exercising moral force he went and closed the door which shut off the children’s quarters, and, re-entering his room, sat down and prepared for the effort of re-inserting himself into literary serenity. He lit another pipe, and was picking up his pen when he heard that fatal door reopened.
Suddenly angry, he got up, went out and closed it with emphasis. He had regained his own doorway when the door was reopened. The Italian woman surveyed him, laughed, and said something to the other nurse. A fussy English fellow. Mother of God, but the English were always so thin and red and irritable!
Sefton heard their laughter as he returned to his table and to the view of the Borghese trees. He sat down. He supposed that the more sensitive and serious northerner must appear rather ridiculous to the deep-chested and voluble south. But, damn it, he would write in spite of those women! Should one be vanquished by a wench’s laughter?
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 25