“A lady left it, sir.”
Sefton sat in the lounge and read her letter. Its brevity equalled its simplicity:
“Dear Mr. Sefton,
“I hope you are not ill. I came to inquire.
“Sincerely yours,
“Ruth Millard.”
Just those few words, seemingly so formal, and yet they moved him as no other words had ever done. They had a hidden meaning. They gave him the kind of courage that is supposed to inspire a man who leads a forlorn hope, and knows himself marked for a bullet. Why mess about and temporise, and let the business drift? He ought to tell her why he was in Italy.
He decided to tell her.
Next day he went to their old meeting-place and found it empty and the lovers gone. He sat down on the seat to wait, but no Ruth appeared. The same thing happened the next day, and on the third day it rained. Sefton began to feel baulked and restless. Why had she given up going to her sanctuary? Was it possible that she was ill?
He decided to call at the English Agency in the Piazza Barberini. The agency was on the first floor, and on a glazed door at the top of a flight of stone steps Sefton saw Miss Walker’s name. He knocked. He was aware of the clatter of typewriters. A voice said: “Come in.”
He entered. Two girls seated at tables glanced at him inquiringly. He stood there holding his hat and looking shy.
“Excuse me, is Miss Millard in?”
No; Miss Millard was not at the office. Miss Millard was not very well, and Miss Walker had sent her to her lodgings. The girls looked at him with interest.
“Nothing serious, I hope? You see, I am a friend of Miss Millard.”
The girls did not think it was serious. They knew that Ruth Millard had appeared worried and troubled and “funny” during the last few days, but they could not tell Sefton so. He might be the cause of it. Very probably he was the cause of it.
Sefton thanked them and disappeared. He went back to the Paradiso and wrote a letter, and carried his letter to the back street in the Ludovisi quarter where Ruth had a bed-sitting room. He thought it a very dismal street, and the Italian woman who opened the door looked equally dismal.
“The Signorina Millard?”
He handed the woman the letter, and she examined it rather like a melancholy monkey fingering a piece of waste paper.
“Si, signore.”
“Give it to her, please.”
He went away, and the Italian woman carried the letter up to the fourth floor, and opened the door of a back room. Ruth was lying in the bed, with the shutters closed. Her face looked dim and vague.
“A letter. A gentleman left it.”
She placed Sefton’s letter on the table beside the bed, and Ruth did not move until the door had closed. She sat up and looked at the envelope. It was as though she was afraid of it. She gazed at it for quite a long while before she had the courage to open and read it.
“Dear Ruth,
“I have been worried. I have not seen you for so long. I must see you, because I have something to tell you. It is something about myself. I ought to have told you earlier, but I did not realize then that the thing would lie heavy on my soul.
“If you can be kind, and are well enough, and it is not raining, please come to the Borghese to-morrow. I shall be there every day at twelve.
“Yours ever sincerely,
“Sefton.”
When she had read his letter she looked frightened. What was it that he had to tell her? It could not be as unhappy as the thing she felt it her duty to tell him? She had had sudden panic. Her conscience matched his, and a worrying conscience can produce a pain that is more fretting than any physical ache. She sat and brooded. Yes, she would have to go, and she would have to tell him.
The following day was fine, fresh and rain-washed, with the tops of the stone pines very green against the blue of the sky. Ruth passed through the Golden Gate and, entering the Borghese, paused by the railings above the riding-track to look at the Roman crowd. There were nurses on the seats and children, and old men. Two girls and three Italian cavalry officers were cantering round the earth track. A groom was placing a small boy on a pony. People lounged and looked at each other and gossiped. It seemed a happy, careless, sun-loving crowd.
Ruth went on towards the rendezvous, feeling that life was a bitter business, and that parents who brought unfit children into the world were the worst sort of sinners, for they tempted you to lie about yourself when a lie might mean marriage. Like Sefton she had to love nakedly and with a clear conscience, and in marriage you gave yourself either as a rotten vessel or a whole one. And if he asked her to marry him——?
She came to the path leading in among the ilexes. She felt weak at the knees. If only she could shirk, keep her secret as dozens of women would have done had they been in her place. The shadows of the ilexes fell across her. She had a sudden glimpse of the seat and of Sefton sitting there.
He rose quickly to meet her. His eyes looked strained. He was not at his ease.
“Thank you for coming.”
She sat down. She had to sit down. She was feeling breathless.
“I have something to tell you.”
“I have something to tell you.”
They uttered the words simultaneously, and then sat gazing at each other rather like two people who have tried to sit on the same chair.
“Sorry. May I begin?”
She faltered. Well, perhaps he had better begin. She would have to hear what he had to say. It might be about the flat, or his work—anything but the problem that lay heavy over her heart.
“Yes. But—perhaps——”
“I have never told you why I came to Rome. I had to come out here because I’m not fit to spend the winter in England. I have had a chest. They say I may be all right if I keep out of England in the winter.”
He was not looking at her while he spoke, but when he had made the confession he turned to glance at her face. It held him surprised and silent. Her eyes had a strange dilated look as though some sudden wonderful thing had been shown her. She was not looking at him, but at the dark foliage of the ilexes.
He wondered. Why did she look like that? Didn’t she guess what lay behind his confession?
He said: “I had to tell you. It’s pretty rotten to be a wretched crock. Because—you see, I’ve come to care for you rather much. Of course, that might mean nothing.”
Suddenly she seemed to come to life, and to emerge from her stillness. She put out a hand and touched his sleeve.
“Oh, Dick——! It’s too wonderful.”
“Why?”
“Why! Oh—my dear, I’m what you call a wretched crock—also. My people managed to send me out here.”
“What—you have had the same trouble?”
“Yes.”
“But you ought not to be in an office.”
“I had to try and do something. My father’s only a managing clerk in a solicitor’s office, and there are five of us. I felt I had to take a working job.”
Half-an-hour ago two other lovers had been sitting on that seat, but they did not look at life as did these two exiles.
“Ruth, don’t you see? If we choose not to have children, why, there is nothing to prevent us. Why, it’s perfectly splendid! You’ll come out of that office. There’s the flat, and plenty of fresh air and sunshine. I can manage for both.”
She let her head rest gently against his shoulder.
“But the risk, Dick? Supposing I got ill again? I should feel so——”
“It’s a mutual risk, dear. Loneliness kills people, you know, and boredom, and having no one who cares.”
“Yes, caring must help.”
“I rather believe it’s the elixir of life.”
SIX MONTHS TO LIVE
When Mr. James Callendar opened the glass-panelled door of the office of Callendar, Tebbs and Hartley—Solicitors—Rutley, the commissionaire, noticed that Mr. Callendar was carrying his umbrella in an unusual way. The umbrella was wet and Mr. C
allendar’s right hand grasped its middle. Usually he carried the umbrella by the handle, much as a beau of the old days carried his flowered cane and as though the silver top contained a phial of sweet-scented essence that could be raised modishly to the beau’s nostrils. For Callendar was a bachelor and a man of routine. Rutley had known him to do the same things and to do them in the same way for the last fifteen years. His hats and his ties and his air of austere shyness had seemed never to vary. But on this January morning he appeared gripping that wet umbrella as though he held something by the throat.
“Good morning, sir.”
Rutley got off his stool, but Mr. Callendar was looking with an air of vacancy at the church spire showing through the window above Rutley’s bald head.
“Morning, Rutley. Mr. Tebbs here yet?”
Rutley’s stolidity varied seldom. Mr. Callendar was an hour late. And, of course, Mr. Tebbs was here. Mr. Tebbs had been interviewing one of Mr. Callendar’s clients, a fussy gentleman up from Surrey whom Mr. Callendar should have been propitiating.
“Mr. Iremonger’s come and gone, sir. Mr. Tebbs saw him.”
“Just as well. You might tell Mr. Tebbs I’m here and that I should like to see him when he can spare the time.”
Mr. Callendar walked down the long, dark passage towards his private room, still gripping that umbrella like a man carrying a furled flag. He kept his hat on. Rutley saw him pause outside the door of Mr. Hartley’s room and Rutley’s curiosity was aroused, because Mr. Callendar’s movements had always been as precise and unvaried as those of a clockwork figure. Never had there been hesitations, vacancies, pausings; and Rutley, pursuing the simile of the clockwork figure, was led to the fanciful impression of Mr. Callendar as a mechanism that had run itself down.
“Works too hard. Always did.”
Mr. Callendar went on into his own room and closed the door and the commissionaire delivered the senior partner’s message to Mr. Tebbs.
“Mr. Callendar’s here, sir. Wants to see you—if you can spare the time.”
Gordon Tebbs was never in a hurry, though his deliberation suggested something well oiled and balanced. He was ruddy. He had very black hair and very dark eyes. He had never been seriously ill; he enjoyed life as he enjoyed a cigar or his golf; he was a happy, healthy pagan.
When he walked into a room he seemed to cock his coat-tails. Almost you expected him to crow, for his redness was the redness of a cock’s comb.
“Morning—Callendar.”
He closed the door and gave the figure in the revolving chair one of his dark, deliberate and jocund glances. Callendar’s hands were resting on the arms of the chair, the long, white fingers extended. He was looking out of the window at a slate roof that was a shade greyer than the sky in the congealed gloom of an English winter. His face had a dreaminess, a look of strange and gentle surprise, as though he had been asleep for twenty years and had been awakened to a world of unfamiliar mystery.
“That you—Gordon. Sit down. I have a few things to tell you.”
But Mr. Tebbs did not sit down. He stood on the hearthrug with his back to the fire. He, too, felt himself confronting an unusualness in James Callendar and he eyed him as he might have eyed a golf ball badly tucked up in a bunker. Callendar had lost all his crispiness. He looked fagged.
“A little below par, James?”
Callendar, smiling faintly, raised his eyes to the ridge of the grey roof.
“We’re a very tired people, Gordon. I think I was beginning to realize it. It’s this tiredness that’s at the bottom of our unrest. We’ve led the world—more or less—for a century. The war tried us a lot——”
Tebbs, standing square to the fire, looked anything but tired.
“You want a holiday, old man. I’ve always said——”
“I’m taking a holiday——”
“Sound business. I’ve always said you kept your nose too close to the grindstone. A couple of months in the sun——”
Callendar’s eyes came to rest on his partner’s face. They still seemed to express a gentle and half-amused surprise and they aroused in Gordon Tebbs a queer feeling of uncertainty, a sense of seeing something strange and yet not seeing it quite clearly. Like an argument that you could not follow or a piece of foggy transcendental philosophy. He put on his pragmatical expression and became emphatic.
“A couple of months in the sun—somewhere. Why don’t you go to Madeira? You’ll come back——”
Callendar appeared to be looking through the wall above his partner’s head.
“I’m not coming back, Gordon.”
“What—retiring?”
“Yes, in a way. I have only six months or so to live.”
His partner looked sincerely shocked. He had an affection for Callendar, more of an affection than he had realized, for old Jim was a white man. He was so reliable, a little dry perhaps, but full of a quiet and patient magnanimity. An unselfish sort of beggar. A fellow who had always had his pockets full of other people’s troubles and foolishnesses. He had had to help to keep two married sisters and to educate a young milord of a brother.
“Six months! But, my dear old chap——”
“Something in the throat, Gordon. Gone much further than I thought it had. Wasn’t bothering. I’m not bothering—now. It won’t matter—much—to anybody.”
“But—my dear old chap!”
“You hadn’t noticed anything?”
“Can’t say that I had. Just a little huskiness——”
James Callendar smiled.
“Just a little huskiness.”
II
Callendar booked a “sleeper” on the Rome express. During his last week in England he came daily to the city office and sat in his accustomed chair. He made his will, he signed the deeds dissolving the partnership, he interviewed a few old clients, and handed over to his partners the various professional affairs for which he had been responsible.
His calmness was astonishing. Not only did he appear to have accepted the inevitable, but there was a kind of brightness in his eyes. Almost, he had the air of a man who had uttered a sigh of relief and whose tired spirit had folded its wings. He seemed utterly unafraid.
Rutley, a warm-hearted creature, spoke of it with awe and in a voice that tended to drop to a thick whisper.
“Six months. Believe me, he’s less upset about it than any of us. Makes you feel queer when he walks in and you hear a voice inside you saying: ‘That’s Mr. Callendar, a man who’s going to die.’ And he’s going for a holiday, just as though he was going down to Brighton for the week-end. Makes you marvel. It’s religion—I suppose. He’s one of the quiet, serious sort.”
The most astonishing thing to the live man was the doomed man’s smile. It was a new smile, gentle and quite effortless. It was neither sad nor happy; it was the kind of smile that is seen on a sufferer’s face when a spasm of pain has passed. It had something of mystery; it was like a light seen dimly and indistinctly. It gave to Gordon Tebbs’s voice an emotional quality when he spoke of it to his wife.
“You know the sort of light you see on a face in an old picture? Just like that. It makes me wonder. You’d think he was glad.”
“Perhaps he is.”
But the man of the jocund eyes could not understand such gladness.
“He’s not a religious chap. Work was his religion. And he’s never enjoyed life. Always—work—work. Never was in love—I gather. He had to keep those two sisters for years and educate a young cub of a brother. But for the last five years he could have enjoyed things. He’s only forty-seven and he’s leaving a private income of seven hundred a year.”
England was in a sleety mood when the boat-train pulled out of Victoria station. Callendar sat in his Pullman seat and watched the sodden suburbs pass into the still more sodden fields. It was a grey country and he was going away into the sunlight, and into his eyes came that quiet and mysterious smile. Probably he did not realize that his life had been a very grey one, a laborious and dusty
affair, for he had had nothing with which to compare its unselfish monotony. His consciousness had remained undifferentiated.
In fact his life had been so quiet and humdrum that when that fatal judgment had been delivered to him he had taken it with supreme quietness. He had been conscious of no shock. He had felt no fear.
A calm voice had said within him: “My friend, you are going to die,” and he had listened to the voice and replied with tranquillity: “Oh, very well. I’ll make a note of it.” He had gone out holding that umbrella by the middle.
For—after all—what had he to live for? He had never known life’s more passionate urges; the flesh in him did not rebel. His spirit consented, as it had always consented, sitting down to the daily routine in an office chair. The man in Callendar had forgotten to insist upon its essential manhood. Besides, Tony—his younger brother—was qualified and established in a country practice, and Iruna and Kate—his sisters—had ceased to be daughters of misfortune. He had settled money on them. Having collected more money than he needed, he had ceased to need it. He mattered to no one in particular. He did not matter very supremely to himself.
The car attendant came to his table.
“Are you taking lunch, sir?”
Callendar came out of his musings for a moment.
“Yes, please.”
He relapsed again into reflection. Obviously the normal daily routine would go on, the material happenings that the body demanded, though he had come to feel that his doomed shell was a superfluity. He would have to go on washing it and feeding it and putting it to bed, until such a time as the doctors and the nurses should take final charge of it from him and relieve him of all responsibility.
The gloomy landscape drifted by.
Would there be much pain?
But why think of it? He had had no pain as yet and the doctor had told him that these throat cases were—at times—extraordinarily painless. He would just grow thin and shrivel up.
“Let’s leave it at that,” he said to himself; “I’m going to Rome. Eternity—and the Eternal City!”
Only twice in his life had Callendar been abroad, once—after passing his final—when he had gone tramping with a friend in the Austrian Tyrol; and again—a year or two later—when he had spent a fortnight in Normandy. But that was nearly twenty years ago and, like many professional men, he had become the slave of the career that he had created. His holidays had been provincial and unexciting, a week’s fishing, or ten days’ golf on some seaside course, or a few days spent with his sisters. Work had absorbed him. He had grown dull and content with his dullness, his club, his flat at Notting Hill, his daily comings and goings, the quiet and sedulous attention to business.
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 27