“What on earth are you talking about, sir?”
“Fate, my lad, fate. That is what is going to happen.”
“But why?”
“I am going to tell you why.”
“But Iris! You can’t do it!”
“It’s because of Iris that I am doing it, Wildie. There’s a moment in some lives when a man comes to the edge of things. I’m there now. I’m going over.”
And there in that quiet farmhouse room, with the lamp turned low and both their pipes smoking, Wilding listened to Farren’s story. “I was an artist, my lad, and the world used a boot on me. I thought I would get even with the world. Do you know what it means to be poor—dirtily and shamefully poor—to see your wife shabby and thin and with frightened eyes? She died in a dirty room—she who was made for niceness and beauty. She was French. And then I saw red. I wanted to get my claws into the smug face of the money-making world.
“I wasn’t going to let my child know the same sort of sordid show. Yes; I was down and under just then, down in the underworld where all sorts of queer things happen. I met a strange little doctor who had the same sort of rage against the respectable as I had. We met in a dirty night-club in Paris. Oh, yes; the Paris underworld, not the tourists’ underworld, where silly fools from the suburbs think they are being devilish dogs. The little doctor wanted to have his jest; so did I—but I wanted money. And the gang over there wanted a link in the chain. Smuggling; contraband; stuff that was worth while. I became that link.”
“What stuff, Farren?”
“You may as well know. Cocaine.”
For a little while there was silence between them. They did not look at each other. Then Farren, speaking very slowly between pulls at his pipe, finished his confession.
“A man may see red and yet foresee the end of things. I knew that probably I should be caught out some day, but I wanted to see the child grow up in some clean corner of the world like this. I wanted to save money for her; I have; it’s settled on her—two-hundred a year or so. She doesn’t know, I’ll give you the name of my lawyers. I wanted the child to be happy; I believe she has been happy.”
Wilding answered quickly.
“There is not the slightest doubt about that.”
“I want her to go on being happy. She’s not made to be a lone creature. I believe you could give her happiness, Wildie. Or will this alter things?”
“I’d give her anything in the world.”
“Man, that’s something off my soul. I believe you two are made for each other. Doesn’t often happen that way.”
“Well, as I’ve already said, the game is up. We have been caught out somewhere. I have had the shadow of it over me for a long while. But they are not going to get me, my lad. They may only suspect me. The other people may have held their tongues. Perhaps when I am deep down in the clean sea—the world won’t bother. She’ll never know.”
“But if the truth should come out?”
“Just hold her fast, man; hold her fast.”
Farren rose slowly from the sofa. His movements had a languor, as though he had exhausted himself. His shoulders had the stoop of resignation, of a burden long born. It was as though he realized the weight of it now that it was slipping from his shoulders. Wilding, strangely shocked and still half-incredulous, went and stood in the doorway.
“Is it as bad as you think? Why not chance it?”
“What, to be shut up in a cage, knowing that she knows? Fate’s been kind: it has given me my warning. No, my lad; I’m going.”
His voice sounded tired; he moved towards the door.
“Besides—at fifty—a man is not so greedy for life. A kind of weariness comes over one. Be kind to her.”
Their hands met and held.
“You need not doubt it.”
“I don’t. But go on being kind. It’s always a bit of a lottery, but somehow I feel that you two——”
“Yes; in spite of my poor, damned face.”
“Partly because of it. But it’s not a poor, damned face to her.”
They moved out into the dark little garden, and to Wilding the night seemed more strange than any other night that he had known. To be walking with a man who was on the way to drown himself! And deliberately and with a sense of the inevitable and the balanced rightness of things.
His throat felt thick.
“I can’t believe it. And yet——”
Farren paused at the gate.
“Why, I’m rounding things off, that’s all. But there is one thing more that you can do.”
“Yes.”
“Here’s an envelope with all the details and addresses and figures inside. And come down to the harbour with me. I have a notion that I am being watched. If there are two of us, and we are talking——”
“I’ll come.”
“You know the way better than I do. When we get down to the road, I’ll take charge. I know a round-about route through the passages and yards.”
So Wilding led. The bracken brushed their knees, and the sea showed as a great dim sheet stretched taut from cliff to horizon under the stars. They met no one; they did not speak. Nor did another word pass between them until Farren had unfastened the painter of the dinghy and was ready to step into it.
“Be very kind to her, Tom.”
“Don’t doubt it.”
They gripped, and Farren stepped down into the swaying dinghy and got out a scull and pushed off. The little white boat floated out into the darkness and became no more than a faint blur upon the waters. And Wilding stood and waited until he heard the starting of the Sea Horse engine. Something vague and grey went gliding out towards the sea, a boat and the soul of a man.
XIII
Three days passed, and St. Gilians knew that Farren the artist, and his boat the Sea Horse, had not returned. So did two other men—strangers—who had been hanging about the little Cornish town and the bungalow on the hill.
For three days a girl had wandered along the cliffs, watching and wondering; and during most of that time Wilding was with her.
“But he must come back, Wildie. What can have happened? It has been quite calm.”
“They tell me there was roughish weather farther out, dear.”
“But he only went for a short cruise. He said that he would be back for breakfast.”
Wilding was torn. He wanted her out of her suspense, and yet he felt that the gradual realization of the tragedy might be more merciful than the sudden shock of bad news. How was it going to end? Would the sea send them a message?
The sea sent its message. Wilding happened to be down at the little harbour when the fishing-boat came in with the sea’s last word—a white lifebelt with “Sea Horse” painted on it. The fishermen had found it floating.
The owner of the boat spoke to the little crowd on the quay.
“I reckon he got in the track of a steamer, and the boat was cut to bits or driven under. Picked up? Not likely. Besides a good lifebuoy is worth saving, too.”
Said a voice: “Who’s going to tell the girl?”
They looked at Wilding, and Wilding had forgotten to flinch when men looked at his scarred face.
“That’s my job: I’ll tell her.”
He went slowly up to the white bungalow and found Iris on the cliff. She had seen the boat come in, but not the passing ashore of the sea’s message, for the tower of St. Gilian’s church hid that strip of the quay.
Wilding stood by her.
“Come and walk. Come up and see Sally and Bob.”
“Oh, Wildie——”
“Come! Do you good. I know.”
He took one of her arms and gently drew her up and away. They crossed the valley, but when they were climbing the track to the farm, Wilding turned aside with her towards the cliffs. He was taking her to the Maiden Rock, and, suddenly, when they were among those great grey stones, she seemed to realize the meaning of the moment.
“Wilde, why have you brought me here?”
He had an arm round
her now.
“Because—my dear—you remember the old tale. They found something to-day out there. It belonged to the Sea Horse.”
She uttered a sudden, bitter cry, and clung to him.
“Oh, Wildie, Wildie, he’ll never come back to me!”
He held her fast.
HERITAGE
Captain Blount had only one leg, but his courage progressed beyond such limitations. With the help of an artificial limb and a stick he made most men of his age appear pusillanimous; but then he was no ordinary man, and Rome is no ordinary city.
Hereward Blount loved Rome. He loved it for its February sunshine and its pellucid distances; for its trees and ruins; for its infinite multifariousness and its children. He loved it in spite of its noise and a certain newness which was strident and mechanical. For a century or more the Blounts had one foot in England and the other in Italy. A Blount had lived in Naples during the Hamilton-Nelson romance. Hereward was the son of that Colonel Bartholomew Blount who had landed in Sicily with Garibaldi.
The temper of the man was exceptional. Wakeford, the doctor, meeting him toiling up the Spanish Steps, with his head well back and his vital face with its jocund eyes all bronze, was reminded of some strong and pagan creature ascending Olympus.
“Life’s rather a glorious show.”
Wakeford, who had an indolent liver and a delicate wife, felt the glow of the man, and was sometimes annoyed by it. This boy with the grizzled head and the vigorous torso, straining along gallantly on one sound leg and a stick, was an eternal challenge to a man whose temperament was somewhat bilious.
“How’s the stump, Blount?”
“Sound as a rock. A little pain sometimes. Rather good for one, you know.”
Good for one, indeed! As a doctor Wakeford knew that people with chronic pains could be plaguing and peevish, and apt to worry the physician when he had sat down to his game of bridge. Wakeford would refer to Blount in the club with a little tinge of scorn.
“Oh, one of those hereditary optimists. Always shining like the sun in South Africa. Rather boring. One prefers a little cloud at times. Three no trumps, partner.”
But Wakeford was a tired man. He could not follow a case of psychology right through, but came up against the obvious and was content with it. Blount was not all yellow metal. He might have a little suite at the “Russie,” and be the most popular man in the hotel because of his gaillard countenance and his courage, but a man like Blount can be very lonely. The women liked to talk to him; but women in the lounge of a hotel may be no more than a kindly and anonymous noise, and Blount was a person. His courage might be personal, but it was neither beef and beer nor red wine and veal. Nor was he a pagan. He was English, and silently and secretively the man of sentiment. The man who can sit for an hour and watch children playing must have deeps of simplicity, elemental urges beyond the pride of Pan.
Most days Hereward Blount climbed the Pincio or swung along into the Borghese gardens, and found a place in the sun, and sat down to watch life and the children. He loved these Roman children because they played so airily and delicately, and with so little noise, and it seemed to him that they were more fairy-like than the little barbarians of the north. Their voices were softer; they were less solid and less quarrelsome. Hardly ever had he seen among these Roman children the red-faced, blaring egoist of colder countries. These children were sunny; also, they were so unlike the grown-up Romans of the day who trumpeted their bright new tin imperialism like a crowd of Fiat cars.
These children of the gardens seemed to him as old as Psyche and Cupid, and the Winged Messenger, older than Rome, old with the beautiful and sensitive youth of time. They were flower-like, bird-like.
He made friends there. He was so jocund, so full of a radiant vitality that children looked, and hesitated and were caught. They came and stood at his knees and smiled, and from shyness snuggled up beside him to a confiding intimacy. Rarely did any child resist him.
But one day in the Borghese Gardens when he was sitting on a seat under an ilex tree near the piece of water where children and mothers and water-fowl congregate, and a stone arch gives to the scene the quality of a picture by Claude, he became the witness of a strange scene. A woman was sitting on a seat near him, while a small boy trailed a little wooden boat at the end of a string.
The woman spoke. She spoke in Italian; obviously she was of the south, but of the sensitive, slim south. She was all black and white, with one of those sad and gracious profiles, and dark and quiet eyes. She had the air of one who had suffered much and silently.
“Ronnie—Ronnie.”
She called the child by an English name, and the child paid no more heed to her calling than a little fat blow-fly pays to the note of a bell.
Blount was interested. It always interested him to watch the way of a woman with her child, nor had he subscribed to the modern cult of non-interference, of leaving the child free to express itself as it pleases, a creed that may imply slackness on the part of the parents. Blount knew that all civilization is coercion, the cult of self-restraint, and that a child should be taught it, for its own sake as well as for the sake of the community. He watched the woman on the seat. What would she do?
“Ronnie, come here.”
The child ignored her. He was a little, solid, handsome child, with a mop of black curls under a round sailor’s hat. Even in his smallness he suggested arrogance. His round face was plump and stupid and stubborn. The woman rose from the seat and went and stood over him.
“Ronnie, it is time to go home.”
He continued playing with his boat.
“Don’t want to go home.”
“Come along, dear.”
“I’m not going home.”
All this was very natural and usual, though Blount got the impression that the woman was afraid of the child. Her touch seemed hesitant. Almost she pleaded.
“Ronnie, we have been here two hours. I have waited here so that you could play. Now we must go home.”
“Won’t go home.”
She stood poised above him. Blount could see her face, and it seemed to him that sudden anger possessed her, a kind of tragic impatience. She bent down and picked the boat out of the water, and instantly there was a struggle. The child began to scream with rage; his little dark face was distorted. He was very strong; he tore the boat out of her hands and replaced it in the water.
Blount’s grizzled eyebrows bristled. He did not laugh—as two Italian men seated on chairs laughed. It seemed to him that this particular woman and her problem were not made for laughter. She had been gently reasonable with the child, and the child had defied her. And obviously it hurt her, and more deeply than the casual onlookers knew.
Said Blount to himself: “I should like to smack that small boy and smack him hard”; but he did not think of interfering. The affair was the mother’s; it was flesh of her flesh.
She moved away.
“I am going home, Ronnie. I shall leave you.”
The boy ignored her; she waited for a moment, and then slowly began to walk towards one of the paths. The boy, squatting at the edge of the water, looked round and saw her retreating. He rose in a rage, and ran trailing the boat after him.
“You shan’t go! You shan’t go!”
His violence was extraordinary; his little fat face grew livid. He stamped and gesticulated, and all the while he kept up a kind of shrill bellowing. “Shan’t go! shan’t go! shan’t go! Silly old mother. Shan’t go! shan’t go!” Blount was watching the woman’s face. Her anger had passed: she stood there embarrassed and humiliated, and as though incapable of dealing with this violent little animal. It was as though she had been struggling for years against some savage force, and had found herself helpless and defeated.
“Ronnie, people are laughing at you.”
The retort came pat, and with a kind of merciless truth.
“No; they are laughing at mother. Silly old mother!”
Her anger revived, though there ma
y have been more anguish in it than anger. She took him by the wrist, and dragged him along the path, a squeaking, struggling little fury. He fought every step; he twisted and twirled, and hung about her legs. He let himself hang so that his feet trailed along the ground.
The Italians laughed. Blount got up, and then sat down again. What a beast of a child! Was it the woman’s fault, or had some heritage proved too strong for her? But he longed to take that little savage on his knee and, after the use of a hand, to use words of terrible candour. If a child cannot be shamed, it should be hurt. It should be the same with grown children.
Meanwhile the mother’s will seemed to wilt under this load of violence. She sat down on another seat further in among the trees. She seemed to be pleading with the child, holding the boat while he still tugged at the string. And then an unforgettable thing happened. The child struck her two sudden blows, one in the face, and the other on the bosom. She sat rigid for a moment; her eyes seemed to close; it was as though those little fists gripped other memories, and opened other wounds. Her pallor was extreme; she seemed to be about to faint.
But Blount had got up. Interference might be clumsy, but he could not restrain himself. He swung along to the seat under the trees. He raised his hat.
He said: “Excuse me, this young fellow is rather a handful. Perhaps you will let me be nurse.”
She opened her dark eyes at him; she was surprised, but not offended. Blount was smiling, and she was grateful.
“Ronnie, the gentleman is going to take us home.”
The boy glared at Blount.
“Who’s he? Don’t want to go home.”
Blount smiled at him.
“Come along, my lad. I’ll carry the boat. Take hands.”
He got a grip of the boy’s wrist. The little body was tense, stubbornly resisting. The face was sullen.
“Now then, one, two, three—march! I’m Captain Blount. When I say quick march, the soldiers march. Now then.”
The child looked at him. There was a clash of wills, a moment of mute yet conscious struggle, but Blount was smiling.
“Step out! You’ve got to be a soldier. Quick march!”
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 54