The boy trailed sullenly at his side.
They walked towards the entrance opposite the Golden Gate in the old red wall of Aurelian: the child sullen, the mother embarrassed and silent. The boy kept glancing up at the man as though appraising an enemy, but the woman looked straight ahead. Blount talked amiable nonsense; it was necessary to make some sort of cheerful noise, but he kept a firm hand on Ronnie’s hand.
“I bet you can’t tell me where you live.”
“Course I can.”
“Well, where?”
“Via Volumna.”
Blount smiled at the mother, and met her eyes for a moment.
“I’m a hotel bird. I perch at the Russie. Does anybody like sugar cakes? You come and have tea with me one day, young soldier.”
“Don’t want your cakes,” said the child.
Blount laughed. Mutinous little devil! And so they came to the Via Volumna, a street of high houses let out in flats. The woman paused outside the door of No. 21.
“Thank you so much.”
She was Italian, but she spoke very good English; and Blount had begun to wonder how and why, but obviously she was shy of him and under some constraint, and he released the child and raised his hat.
“Good-bye. Good-bye, young pirate. Do you know what a pirate is?”
The boy did.
“A man who shoots people and takes their ships. I’m going to be a pirate and shoot people.”
“Nice child,” thought Blount.
During the following week the mother and child were often in his mind, though he did not see them again in the gardens; and then, one afternoon, while strolling through the lounge of the Russie to his favourite table he saw the mother sitting on one of the sofas. She had come in to tea with one of the residents, and Blount, sighting old Lady Scoles in her own particular corner, walked across and joined her. Lady Scoles knew everybody who was knowable in Rome, and Blount was a pet of hers. He told her naughty stories and she loved them.
“May I sit down?”
“Of course.”
“I want to ask you a question.”
“Is there a catch in it?”
“I hope not. Can you see the dark woman in black over there having tea with the Misses Skipwith?”
Lady Scoles looked through her glasses at the mother, and then over the top of them at Hereward Blount.
“Yes, I see her.”
“Do you know who she is?”
“Don’t you?”
“No; though we met informally a week or so ago.”
Lady Scoles looked wise.
“That’s Gerald Tarleton’s widow. He married an Italian, you know.”
“Tarleton!”
“Exactly.”
Then Blount understood, though the understanding of the tragedy enlarged itself gradually like a landscape as seen by a man climbing a hill. Tarleton! Everybody in Rome had known Tarleton, and had ended by ceasing from knowing him, just as people in London and Paris and Nice had shed him. A very evil person with a jowl and a flat top to his head and a temper like a sandstorm; a fine figure of a man, but a beast. The violence of his temper had been notorious; it had landed him at times into all sorts of trouble; it had even come near to creating a large scandal in a particular Protectorate where the brute in Tarleton had exercised itself upon the blacks. Later, he had taken to drink; and pneumonia, flaming up in his sodden body, had snuffed him out at the end of six days. For a year or two previous to his death he had been living in Rome.
Blount marvelled. He looked across the lounge at Tarleton’s widow, and wondered how such a marriage had been possible, though Tarleton of course had been a handsome, dominant beast. And a man does not show the worst of himself to the girl whom he desires.
Old Lady Scoles observed his glance, and read into it that which was in her own mind.
“Yes, life’s rather amazing. A gentle kind of creature.”
“Too gentle for the Tarletons of this world,” said Blount.
“I believe he behaved like a beast to her.”
“He did that to everybody, apparently. One of the better deads, but he might have done it sooner. Will you excuse me?”
Lady Scoles nodded at him benignantly.
“Oh, yes; go and be introduced.”
He went gallantly with stick and artificial leg. The Misses Skipwith welcomed him. “Oh, do sit down and have tea with us. This is Mrs. Tarleton. Captain Blount—Mrs. Tarleton.” Blount bowed. He did not say that they had met before. He found her dark eyes resting on him for a moment; they could be frightened eyes, as though the male creature had destroyed her confidence in life. But Blount did not sit down; he chatted for a minute, and excused himself. “I’d love to stay, but you will have to excuse me. Letters to write.” But his parting glance was at Cesca Tarleton. It was more significant than he knew.
Blount went to his room and had tea sent up there. He wanted to think, to absorb the situation, and when he realized that the little savage animal of the Borghese Gardens was Tarleton’s son he began to understand. The child was like the man: he was Tarleton over again. But what a tragedy! What a double tragedy for the woman!
Blount lit his pipe.
“Nature does things strangely,” he thought. “If only the kid had taken after the mother. But what a damnable heritage. And for her! She may have counted on the child to make it up to her a little, and life and Tarleton gave her—that.”
He sat and reflected. He was wondering whether heritage was final, and whether environment could modify heritage. The scientists were always arguing the point. Could anything be done to humanize that little devil of a Tarleton, a child who could strike his mother in the face because she thwarted his little animal selfishness? Rather a stiff proposition! And a rather ghastly one for the mother.
More than his interest was involved, though a man of Hereward Blount’s age does not chase illusions. He had watched life too much and too often, and yet there was much of the eternal boy in him. There were occasions when he did things suddenly, on the surge of an impulse. He had finished his tea and his pipe, and he took his hat and stick and returned to the lounge. Mrs. Tarleton and the two Englishwomen were standing near the entrance door. Mrs. Tarleton was going.
Blount’s arrival appeared fortuitous and incidental. He had a ready smile and a quick tongue.
“Seems to me I shall need an artificial head as well as a leg. And a man out of tobacco——”
He spoke to the elder of the Misses Skipwith, but the angle of his glance was on Cesca Tarleton.
“Can’t we get it for you? I’m going shopping presently.”
“Oh, no; thanks all the same. I’ll hobble along to the shop in the Piazza di Spagna.”
The intrusion succeeded. He found himself in the doorway with Mrs. Tarleton. He appropriated the occasion.
“Driving?”
“No; I walk.”
“So do I. Good for man’s soul. You go this way?”
“Yes.”
It was as though she understood the challenge and accepted it. The pavement of this particular Roman street, like that of most Roman streets, is narrow, and Blount moved to take the outer side, the asserting of his old-fashioned creed that a man should stand between woman and the rough-and-tumble world. Certainly in Rome he should stand between her and the taxis. But she, it seemed, understood the limitations of a stick and a mechanical leg.
“Please let me walk on that side.”
His eyes gave a kind of gleam.
“Dear lady, on no account. As you see it has been raining, and at least I can take the splashes.”
She smiled faintly.
“One has to shout so in Rome, and I have a rather quiet voice.”
“Exactly.”
He paused, resting on his stick.
“May I be sensible. If we are to walk why should we walk in this street. A taxi up to the Pincio, and a stroll into and by way of the Borghese?”
She looked at him with solemn eyes.
“Bu
t your tobacco?”
“I can get it on the way home. Shall it be a taxi?”
“Yes.”
Her entering of the motor-cab seemed to him to symbolize her acceptance of the sympathy he wished to offer her. And was it no more than sympathy? She sat erect in the taxi, serious and dark, like a Roman woman going to some sad ceremony. They threaded the chaotic, noisy restlessness of the streets, and emerged into the sunlight and the spaces between the trees. Her pale face seemed to grow less shadowy.
The taxi drew up on the terrace overlooking Rome, and they got out, and Blount paid the driver. The sun was low over the Janiculum, and they stood by mutual consent on the terrace, and looked out over Rome. The dome of St. Peter’s had a tinge of amethyst.
Blount said: “Whenever I stand here I marvel. There is something in this city that makes one believe in immortality. How’s my friend the pirate?”
It was as though she had been waiting for that question. It seemed to release in her a spasm of emotion. She turned from the sunset, and they moved together into one of the alleys between the trees.
She said: “Life is so difficult; and one makes so many mistakes.”
Blount appeared to lean more heavily on his stick. Obviously her marriage had been her great mistake. She had suffered humiliation as a wife, and now she was suffering humiliation as a mother. She was too sensitive.
He found himself saying the obvious thing: “Oh, most children are little egoists. Some more than others,” and the inadequacy of the remark provoked him to a more mordant frankness.
“That boy of yours wants his own way, always and everywhere. You will excuse me. I was watching. It made me angry.”
She flushed slightly as though he had accused her.
“You thought me weak.”
“No; but, perhaps, too gentle. But one can’t get away from one’s nature. You haven’t tried——?”
He could not put it into words. Nor, somehow, could he visualize her using force upon that little violent body. It would hurt her too much, and she would shrink.
And suddenly she surprised him. She diverged to a seat and sat down. Her face had a white stillness. She looked strung up to the crisis of a confession.
“You are a stranger, and yet—I feel—you understand. You are kind, but you can be stern. Forgive me for speaking like this.”
He said gently: “Please go on. You are laying a peculiar honour upon me.”
“But does one sit on a seat and talk to someone who——”
“Dear lady, that’s life. I have sat down on a seat in a London park, and a man has come and sat down beside me, and in half an hour half our lives have been exchanged.”
“Ah!” she said, “you are different. You understand things. Why?”
“I don’t know. My father was an old warrior, and my mother something much better than an angel—a woman. Please talk.”
“You never struck your mother.”
With a quick movement she pulled up the loose sleeve of her black frock, and showed him a bruise.
“What a confession! What shame! You will think me a weak, dishonourable creature who whimpers and tells tales. But it happens so often. He strikes me. His little rages are—incredible. Almost worse than——”
Her voice seemed to smother, but Blount could have finished the sentence for her. “Almost worse than his father’s.”
He prodded the gravel with his stick.
“Have you ever struck back? No; I suppose not.”
“Once I did. And he fought me. Oh, I’m sorry. I should not be speaking like this. But I don’t know what to do. I have tried gentleness, persuasion, reason. I have tried to make him understand. But I can’t bear it much longer.”
He looked at her, but he saw that she had not finished.
“And such horrible thoughts come. Sometimes I think that it would be better—if he—I—ceased to live. Nothing but pain—violence and pain. And I can see him growing up, and leaving pain everywhere behind him, as his father did. Can you understand? Sometimes—I almost feel—that it is my duty—to stop this heritage.”
He was shocked, not by her but with her. He said: “I understand. I have known other creatures that could not be allowed. No; we won’t put it that way. I had a dog once whose delight was the killing of other and smaller dogs. I thought—no—the easy way would be weak. I tamed that dog, made a gentleman of him.”
Her glance was appealing.
“How?”
“Oh, persuasion of sorts. But it is getting cold. I must not let you sit here.”
He stood up, and in rising she seemed to surrender herself into his care.
Those people who flattered themselves that they knew the real Blount pretended to be piqued and amused when it became known later that “Old Grizzle Head” was engaged to marry Tarleton’s widow. But no man is a charted sea even to his friends, and the usual and obvious things that are said had the fatuity of most facile opinions. “Old Blount caught at last.” “There must be fifteen years between them.” “Oh, she’s shy and gentle, but quite charming.” “Ever seen the kid? Blount’s got a handful there. Horrid little beast; a second Gerald.” “Oh, probably she has kept the kid in the background.”
But no one in Rome had any knowledge of the strangeness of the betrothal, or of Blount’s quixotic offer and her acceptance of it. The inwardness of the affair was deep water. Cesca’s second lover had a grizzled head, and the wisdom and tenderness of his years.
“Listen. You are going to let me have the child for a month. If I can do anything to tame him—then, cara mia, I’ll ask you to marry me. We have got to face that heritage. There must be something of you in the boy.”
She consented. She asked him no questions, and exacted no promises. As a mother she had exhausted her possibilities. Possibly she had not been sufficiently impartial, and she trusted Blount.
Blount did the thing thoroughly. He borrowed a friend’s villa at Frascati for a month, engaged an English hospital nurse and told her just as much as it was necessary for her to know. Ronald was collected one morning and whisked off in a car to Frascati. His acceptance of the adventure was easy, because the little rogue-child believed that he was going for a morning’s drive with the man who made soldiers march. He did not realize that he was about to spend a month with an old soldier.
The first clash came when Master Ronnie realized what had happened to him. To begin with, the villa at Frascati had seemed to him a wonderful place; it had even contained boxes of lead soldiers, and between lunch and tea Hereward Blount and the child played at soldiers in the sunny loggia. Blount showed Ronnie Tarleton how infantry stood on parade and cavalry were drawn up in squadrons.
About six o’clock the nurse collected the child. He supposed that he was going home, but when he discovered that he was to be bathed and put to bed by a strange woman in a strange house, he flew into one of his rage storms.
“I want to go home to mother. Let me alone, you old beast.”
The nurse had had her instructions. She was a strong and deliberate person, and she picked up the boy and carried him struggling to the loggia where Blount sat watching the sunset. Ronald Tarleton was set down before Old Grizzle Head, a kind of grave soldier-god in a chair.
“What’s all this? Stand up, young man, like a soldier. You can leave us, nurse.”
The boy looked sullenly at Blount.
“I want to go home to mother.”
“So—you do! But you are not going home to your mother, Ronnie, until you have learnt how to behave to your mother.”
Blount’s eyes were smiling and kind but inexorable.
“Soldiers don’t scream and strike women. A soldier has to be a gentleman. I am going to teach you, my dear.”
And suddenly the boy flew at him, but Blount had expected such an attack. He just caught him, imprisoned him, and holding the little hands, held the boy on his knees, with his head upon his chest. He did not strike him. He just held him inexorably, helpless and controlled, until the littl
e legs had ceased to drum, and the struggling body relaxed.
“No escape, my dear. I am going to teach you to behave like a soldier. You are going to learn to obey. You are not going to have your own way. You are going to learn to be a little gentleman instead of a little beast.”
The boy whimpered.
“I want my mother.”
“You are not going back to your mother until you have learnt what I have to teach you.”
There was a sudden storm of angry tears.
“I’m not a little beast.”
“No one wants you to be a little beast, my dear. Now, are you going to let nurse bath you?”
“Yes.”
“You will tell her you are sorry for not behaving like a soldier.”
“I won’t.”
“Very well, you will stay here until you do.”
To Hereward Blount that singular month in Frascati was proved to be one of the most humanly interesting experiences he had known, more fascinating than shooting tigers or fighting wild tribesmen. He set out to tame a little tiger. He never lost his temper. Always he was kind, patient, but inexorable. He was always ready to play with the child, and the soldiers were paraded on the stone floor of the loggia.
“Now then, lights out, old man. Last post.”
“But, Nuncy Blount, I want just to——”
“Bugle’s gone. Orders, my dear.”
There were clashes, but each day showed a perceptible change in the child. He had found a master; his little violent egotism was countered and controlled. Also, he was not all Tarleton. Something else showed in him: an affection which, when purged of its savage passion, began to express itself. Besides, Blount had always been irresistible to children; he could be the child with them when the day was a child’s play-box. He handled young Tarleton with delicate strength, and the boy, having once discovered the inevitableness of certain things, seemed to shed his savagery and to change. He began to show a gradual devotion to Blount. More and more he wanted to be with Old Grizzle Head.
“Nuncy, were you at Waterloo?”
“No, my dear. I’m not quite so old as that, but my grandfather was there. He was wounded.”
“Nuncy, was your leg——?”
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 55