The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping

by Warwick Deeping

  He managed to stuff a willed silence into his ears. He wrote two pages of manuscript, but the angry concentration tired him. It was like planing wood against the grain.

  Nor had the Paradiso and Rome finished with its attack upon Sefton’s sensitive surface. He went to bed soon after ten; his doctor had warned him against late hours. The children were asleep, the nurses silent, and the street became less full of hootings and the roarings of Fiat taxis. Sefton began to congratulate himself. He dozed off.

  Bang! A hand had seized him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him back into consciousness.

  Bang! His neighbour’s door shook the flimsy wall. He heard a voice, and yappings of a little dog. The voice was a woman’s and French. Translated it expressed the usual patter.

  “Oh, my Poo-poo! Wow-wow-wow! Poo-poo kiss his dear Mumsy-mumsy!” And so on. The lady was a cheerful person who could talk to herself and a dog, and she talked as a Frenchwoman talks, as though her bedroom were a desert island. She opened drawers and shut them noisily. She walked about the room on high-heeled shoes that clattered and squeaked. The door of her wardrobe also had a squeak. She talked to Poo-poo. She put her shoes outside in the corridor, and closed the door with a crash.

  Sefton sat up in bed, with a tight feeling in his stomach. He was flushed, trembling, furious. He switched on the light beside the bed and looked at his watch. Nine minutes to twelve! Damnation! Why couldn’t the woman come to bed at a decent hour, and with a decent consideration for her neighbours!

  The voice continued.

  “Poor Poo-poo! Is my little darly-warling tired? Here is his nicy little bedsy.”

  Sefton uttered a “Good God!” and, feeling hot and moist, bumped protestingly upon the partition wall. The protest was without effect, save that the Frenchwoman appeared to make more noise.

  He lay down and tried to reason with himself. No use getting in a state over the affair. This was reality, life, progress. But as he lay there trying to will himself into resignation, he could feel his heart beating tensely, and the knotting of something in his stomach.

  Would the woman come to bed at this hour every night? And during the day there would be the nurses and the children.

  Well, he would have to change his hotel, find a quiet corner somewhere. It was only a question of finding the right place.

  But for Sefton, a man who was made ill by noise, there seemed to be no right place in Rome, and the Paradiso was Rome in miniature. Go where you would in Rome it continued to be the city of hideous noise. It was a vast playground swarmed over by grown-up children who blew tin trumpets and hailed Caesar and the New Toy Imperialism.

  Sefton waged war on the upper floor of the hotel. He might be foolishly sensitive, if not quite so truculent as Schopenhauer, but he had persistence, a streak of Mars. He wrote, but he wrote like a man recording a sonnet in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. He fought against the various domestic noises as he had fought against the fear and the fury of the trenches. It was war. Whenever that door in the corridor was left open by the Italian women, he went out and closed it. They had begun jestingly and gone on to open malice, but Sefton’s persistence wore them down. He never said a word; he never looked at them when they met in the passage. His hatred of them remained hidden by a mask of apparent indifference. At the end of the fourth day they refrained from leaving the door open.

  But Sefton had been writing and living under tension, and he was a sick man in the sense that his reserves were slender, almost as slender as his finances. On the fourth night, when Madame Poo-poo woke him up with the crash of her door, he had a heart attack. He sat up in bed with his arteries drumming, and a sense of disaster impending over his soul.

  “I must get out of this.”

  But where in Rome was he to get to? He had been exploring the Eternal City, but in the quarters where the foreign element resided he had been unable to find his Via Sacra. And after a night of broken sleep and mental exasperations, he found himself afraid of his little writing-table. He did not dare to sit down. He had a sudden feeling of helplessness in the face of the effort of grim concentration. He put on his hat and went out and, passing through the Golden Gate, sought for silence and green shadows in the Borghese. Was there any green and silent spot in Rome, or was everything Progress and the Great God Fiat?

  He wandered under the stone pines. He sat about in the most solitary places, where the sunlight flickered and there was a sense of coolness and moisture; but the silence and the solitude were very thin. He explored still further. He passed through a great stone arch that held a blue distance framed in its tympanum; he found himself on a terrace laid out with formal beds. There were some big white buildings down below. This part seemed but half decorated and more deserted. He wandered about under some scattered pines, and coming to a clump of ilex, found a little winding path that led him into a kind of shrubbery. And suddenly he discovered himself in a little space shut in by shrubs and trees; there was a seat, and on the seat a girl was sitting with a book and a packet of sandwiches.

  She glanced up at him with an air of surprise and of reproach. She was a delicate-looking thing with large dark eyes and a slim throat. Her glance registered a protest. It was hostile. She saw in him man, the intruder, the destroyer of sanctuaries, the prophet of progress, the poet of petrol and of skyscrapers.

  Sefton, instead of retreating, allowed shyness to urge him awkwardly to the other end of the seat. The girl edged to the opposite extremity with her book and her sandwiches. She looked English, and with an air of defensive aloofness she sat immersed in her novel.

  Sefton began to feel uncomfortable. It occurred to him that she came here for silence and solitude, and that he, in searching for the same old-world tranquillities had disturbed hers. He glanced at her a little apologetically. He stood up. He should have removed himself unobtrusively, but something moved him to speak to her, and to disappear as a man and not as a mere shadow.

  He raised his hat.

  “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’ve blundered into your little sanctuary. I’ll clear out.”

  She looked up at him, startled. She had a fear of strange men, but her eyes met Sefton’s. She thought he looked very miserable, and so tired.

  “Oh—it’s not my private property.”

  He hesitated.

  “But you found it first. You have the first mortgage. Rome is so devastating.”

  He still hesitated. He was poised there momentarily like a poor, obsolete god with draggled wings ready to take to flight. She had only to be silent or to reply with a few casual and commonplace words. But her face had changed its expression. It suggested the petals of a windflower opening to a shaft of unexpected sunlight.

  “Yes—devastating. That’s the very word. I’ve been searching for it.”

  Her defensiveness had disappeared. She sat with the open book on her knees, looking a little expectant. He lingered.

  “Yes, just a word. But this city is like a beautiful woman with a voice like a steam-saw. You’ll excuse me; I ought not to have spoken to you——”

  “No. But sometimes——”

  “One does. Perhaps one has to. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

  Again he waited for the hint that he should go, but she did not give it. She was looking up at him.

  “Are you new to Rome?”

  “Not quite a week.”

  “A holiday?”

  “No; I came to work.”

  “I have been here two months.”

  “Working?”

  “Yes.”

  He moved a little nearer to the seat. He hesitated.

  “May I?”

  She nodded. He sat down. A sudden feeling of inevitableness possessed him.

  “What do you do in Rome?”

  “I’m a typist and clerk at an agency—Miss Walker’s agency.”

  She waited for him to respond.

  “I see. And I write books. At present I am trying to write one on the top floor of an hotel, and next door to two It
alian nurses and five children.”

  “Can you?”

  “In fragments, and with much inward cursing. This morning I gave it up.”

  It was her turn to take up the chant.

  “How horrible! I think I know. When I had been here a week I felt that I could not bear it. Nothing but noise, noise, noise all day and most of the night. It’s like having sharp stones flung at one continually.”

  “Do you still feel like that?”

  “Not quite so badly. I had to—to suppress something in myself, to let it go numb so to speak.”

  “But that’s damnable. It’s the sort of resignation that eats one’s soul out. So you come here——”

  “I bring my lunch here. No one else seems to come here. I suppose it is too quiet for Italians.”

  “Thank God.”

  She smiled faintly and looked at her wrist watch.

  “I shall have to go. Our place is in the Piazza Barberini. Miss Walker’s a dear. She’s been through things.”

  He stood up.

  “It’s the crass, stupid, selfish thoughtlessness of the sensational people. I hope you’ll forgive me. My name is Sefton.”

  “Mine is Millard.”

  She, too, stood up.

  “There is nothing to forgive, is there? You were just looking for what I had found. I’ll leave it to you.”

  He wanted to ask her if he might share it in the future, but he did not put the plea into words. He had a feeling that this little secret spot belonged to a mutual sympathy. And perhaps she understood.

  Sefton went back to the Hotel Paradiso, and Ruth Millard to the agency overlooking the Piazza Barberini. Possibly the noises of Rome sounded less discordant now that each had found someone who suffered from those discords. But Sefton was unable to work; the will to work had deserted him; he was tired; he wanted to escape from the tension of effort. There are times when the self becomes so turgid and concentrated that it ceases to flow. He sat at his window and dreamed.

  There was a voice that said: “I will go there again to-morrow.”

  He went, only to find that little secret place occupied by two lovers. They were kissing, and Sefton felt vaguely envious of their kisses. He retreated, to loiter up and down the path waiting for the girl to whom Rome was torment. Ridiculous, hypersensitive pair! What did those lovers care for street noises, and it was to lovers that the world looked.

  He met Ruth Millard by a group of cypresses. He raised his hat.

  “I’m sorry. We are ousted. Lovers.”

  His half whimsical smile excused the confession.

  “Such people are privileged.”

  She, too, was smiling and looking past him.

  “Oh—these two. Are they the ones?”

  The man and the girl had emerged; youth’s half-hour was up; they came towards and past Sefton and Ruth Millard, arms linked, smiling in each other’s faces.

  “Yes.”

  “They are there every day. They come out just about the time I arrive.”

  “So the sanctuary is ours.”

  Both of them divined the intimate implication, and neither of them questioned it. The coincidence had an inevitableness. They wandered on together and took possession of the seat among the ilexes. Sefton noticed that she had brought no book with her.

  He studied her face. It had a gentleness, which is rare in modern cities. She seemed to look at life questioningly. She was so unsure.

  “How is the Piazza to-day?”

  “We have three typewriters in the room I work in.”

  “So there is noise within and without.”

  “The noise you make yourself is never so bad as the noise made by other people. Besides—I’m used to typewriters. How’s the hotel?”

  “Just an hotel. I have not done any work to-day.”

  “Oh; couldn’t you?”

  “Submerged. Couldn’t get my chin up, somehow. It’s such a scuffle.”

  She brooded.

  “Yes, a scuffle. They’re so strong—those people.”

  “Vigorous children. We must be very old.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Is it that we belong to a type that can’t adapt to the new environment? We’re not meant to survive. We shall go under in the thick of the crowd. We shall be ground up in the wheels of the machine.”

  She glanced at him a little wistfully.

  “Really? But I don’t feel——”

  “You think we have got into the wrong hutch.”

  She gave a little laugh.

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to be ground up. There are museums left, you know.”

  “Say—zoological gardens. I wonder if there is a quiet cage to be found in Rome.”

  She had brought her lunch with her, a neat little parcel, and she untied the string.

  “Do you mind?”

  “Oh—please. It’s your feeding-time. I take mine in the Paradiso monkey-house.”

  She reproved him.

  “You sound bitter. One shouldn’t be——”

  “I apologize. I’m not bitter, only exasperated. I have got a sore brain. But is there anywhere in Rome——?”

  She bit at a sandwich. She had good teeth.

  “There must be, if you have the time to search and can afford it.”

  “Yes—that’s it.”

  She looked sympathetic.

  “Can’t you?”

  “I could—within reason.”

  “Supposing I ask Miss Walker. She knows Rome like a book.”

  “Will you?”

  “Of course.”

  They met every day in the boschetto, and Ruth would bring him addresses, and they would discuss Rome as a couple of birds might confer over the choosing of a nesting-place. The search began to have a double significance hardly appreciated at first by either of them, but growing insensibly. Man is the supreme egoist, but Sefton had the temperament of the artist, and the artist was tired of being no more and no less than himself. Rome had flung him into the thick of the crowd, and he had felt lost and crushed and rather helpless. His self-pity became sublimated into a more delicate divining of this girl’s case. She was his counterpart. She had to scuffle for a living; she had an inherent gentleness; she had been pushed out of a needy suburban home in England, and the rudeness of life hurt her.

  Sefton ceased to be single-minded. His consciousness began to double itself. He saw two persons where there had been one.

  He took the addresses that Ruth brought him, and explored and climbed endless staircases in high houses, but nothing quite pleased him until he discovered that house in one of the new areas. It was one of a row of high new buildings in a very new and unfinished street, but on the top story he found a little flat with windows opening upon blue distances and the brown sea of Rome’s roofs. Also it had a kind of roof-garden and loggia combined, where green things could be trained to scramble, and flowers made to bloom in vases and tubs. It had silence. The restless stir of the city was no more disturbing than the distant sound of the sea.

  Sefton’s Italian was patchy. The owner of the house lived on the ground floor, and their discussion of the matter in hand was inadequate. Sefton managed to make the Roman understand that he would return and bring an interpreter.

  Ruth spoke Italian quite passably, and Ruth was taking to herself a new meaning. If Sefton were in love with the woman, he was also in love with the possible partner, an unexpectedly capable person with a gentle voice. He thought for himself and he thought for her, which meant that he was ripe for the right sort of mating.

  Ruth was taken to see the flat, and to act as interpreter between Sefton and the proprietor, and when Ruth had seen the little kitchen and the salon and the two bedrooms, she was led out into the loggia to look at Rome.

  She was enthusiastic.

  “It’s perfect, and quite reasonable. But you will need a servant.”

  “No; I shall do without a servant. Make my own morning coffee, and get my meals at a restaurant.”

 
She thought the idea rather dreary and unintimate, but she did not say so. She did not like to make too many suggestions, because her new feeling for Sefton made her shy.

  But when Sefton returned to the Paradiso and sat at the window of his lonely little room, he saw more than the trees of the Borghese. He saw Ruth as his wife at the top of that high building. He saw himself peacefully at work.

  It was then that life began to hurt him, not with its noises and discords, but with other disharmonies. How could he, a man of five-and-thirty with old scars in his lungs, marry a healthy girl nearly ten years younger than himself? He was an exile. Marriage with him would make her an exile.

  And did she care?

  His sensitive conscience began to complicate the issue. He ought not to give her a chance of caring. He ought to tell her just what he was.

  But he wanted her to care. He wanted to make all sorts of excuses for letting her care. It would be so easy.

  And then he fell into a sudden rage with himself.

  “You selfish beast! You want to be comfortable. You want to persuade yourself that it would be pleasant to have a housekeeper. You want to feather your own nest.”

  But was it so? Was he not wanting certain things for Ruth’s sake? Did he not care as he had never expected to care?

  Well, if he cared, he would not condemn her to exile and a partnership in which nine-tenths of the risk would be hers.

  For three days he did not go near their meeting-place in the gardens of the Borghese. He left it to those two healthy Roman lovers. He envied them. He tried to feel ironical and dispassionate, and failed. He wandered restlessly about Rome, and lay in the grass among the ruins on the Palatine, and watched the afternoon crowds on the Pincio. A band made music; children played. He tried to convince himself that he was cut off from all these human, physical things. He had his craft; he was a writer of books, and nothing more.

  Returning to the Paradiso he was handed a letter by the concierge.