The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping

by Warwick Deeping

  Francesca looked frightened. She had good cause to be afraid, but she was a wise woman, and she did not intensify her husband’s anger by trying to oppose it. She too was angry; she had every right to soothe his anger by sharing it and sympathizing with it.

  “The wretch! The mean little monkey! But do not let him see that we are angry. Say nothing, Cesare. We will keep steady faces. He must not be allowed to exult.”

  Grandi seemed to reflect.

  “Yes, that’s true,” he agreed; “do not open your heart to the knife.”

  But Francesca’s fear remained, now that Luigi had shown himself with a vengeance. He had been very lucky in South America; also he had found rich men who were ready to join him in the exploiting of Monte Gandolfo. It was to be one of the little pleasure towns of Europe and America. Luigi, fat and well-dressed, drove about the town in a big motor-car; he was always smoking a cigar; he never appeared to walk anywhere. He was a great man; he allowed Monte Gandolfo to appreciate his greatness. Monte Gandolfo had seen him ducked in a water-trough, but now—somebody else would do the ducking.

  He allowed himself to speak of Cesare with good-natured contempt and pity.

  “Poor fellow! This is what comes of being slow and old-fashioned. I wanted that view—yes. He could have had it had he been less of a fool. I’ll show you people how to make money.”

  Bissolo was a man of imagination. That is to say he conceived a particular way of making himself appear more offensively triumphant in the eyes of his old enemy. He was one of those vicious little men who can wait for an opportunity, and use it to the last rub, when it comes. The Splendide was being garnished for the approaching season; gardeners were at work; tons of earth were dumped on the rocky surface that had been cut and blasted out of the hillside. Every morning Bissolo would ascend to the roof, and with his own hands hoist the Italian flag on the flagstaff. He would stand and stare down into the Hesperides garden and at the windows of the little hotel. If he caught sight of Cesare he would raise his hat mockingly. And every evening he would go through the performance of lowering the flag and saluting his old enemy.

  Cesare got into the way of watching and waiting for this piece of dumb show. He knew that Luigi meant it to be as the crowing of a cock, and each day the performance brought Cesare nearer to his final fury. Bissolo would hoist that flag and wave his hat once too often.

  Now, women are queer. Francesca got it into her head that the business would end in a tragedy, and she watched her man as a mother watches a very young child who is just able to walk. For days she did not let Cesare out of her sight.

  One evening, looking through the glass door of her husband’s little office she saw him handling a gun that he kept there, and so intent and absorbed was he that he did not realize that he was being watched.

  She went in. Cesare was slipping a couple of cartridges into the breach.

  “What are you doing?”

  He was startled, but his face was gloomy and stubborn.

  “Nothing. Preparing for a little shooting.”

  Her fear made her strong.

  “Cesare, give me that gun.”

  “Nonsense. If I want to bring a bird down off the roof of that cursed hotel——”

  “Give me the gun.”

  But he would not, and when she tried to take it from him he resisted her and tried to push her off.

  “Let be. This is no woman’s affair——”

  “Cesare——!”

  And suddenly she burst into tears; she went down on her knees.

  “All these years—you have loved me. We have been so happy. I have given you children—and now——”

  Cesare stood and stared. Cesca was not a woman for tears. His face twitched. And then—something—seemed to break in him. He put the gun down on the table and bent over his wife.

  “Cara mia, do not weep. If you wish it—you shall have the gun.”

  She flung her arms round his neck and held him.

  “Oh—my love, do not kill me by some wild deed. Am I not more to you—than that little braggart. Leave it to God, Cesare, leave it to God.”

  He kissed her.

  “My Cesca——”

  “Leave it to the good God. Promise.”

  “I promise,” he said.

  She got him to kneel beside her, and like a child she made him utter a simple prayer. Let God judge between them. They would be patient; they would bear what they might be made to bear.

  And in a most strange way did God seem to answer Francesca’s prayer. He judged like the old God of thunder and of justice. It happened the very next day at the very time when Luigi Bissolo, alone in the new hotel, was preparing to lower the flag and to grin his good night at the Hôtel Hesperides.

  There came a shock, a shuddering of the earth. All Monte Gandolfo knew the meaning of that tremor, and came rushing from its doors. It was a strange, panic moment, and men and women stood still in the streets, looking at each other and waiting. Everyone in Monte Gandolfo heard the big bells of the cathedral utter one deep and single note, though it was known afterwards that no hand touched the rope.

  “It is the voice of God,” said an old woman in the midst of a strange silence.

  From the upper town came a sudden rumbling. A man, looking up towards the castle, raised his arms and uttered a loud cry.

  “The hotel—Luigi’s new hotel——!”

  The Splendide seemed to crack, to topple, and then to fall forward like a child’s house of bricks. The hillside, shaken by the tremor, had cracked and given way under it. The great building went crashing like an avalanche of stone.

  And there stood the Hôtel Hesperides and its garden untouched—as of old—above a great grey scar where the mass of rock and masonry had slid, thundering and smoking, into the valley below.

  ELIZABETH

  He wore rough tweeds, a soft collar, and a cherry-coloured tie. Burnt brown, slightly grizzled, lean and hard, he suggested an alert and large dog, dignified and sound of temper. His eyes were very blue, clear, shrewd and clean.

  Each day after breakfast and a pipe in the lounge he would disappear. He would take the road to the moor, going steadily up hill with that easy, loping stride, hatless, slung round with a haversack, a pair of field-glasses, and a neatly-rolled raincoat. He carried an ash stick shod with a pointed iron ferule.

  His name was Grimshaw, a name well-known to lovers of wild life; he had travelled all over the world; there had been books by him on the bird life of Northern Africa, on a winter in Kashmir, on three years of wandering in Brazil. His age was anything around fifty, but he was one of those men whose age does not seem to matter.

  The Cressford Arms was a very notable old country inn. Built over the site of Tawbridge Abbey, and possessed of some of the abbey gardens, it had dignity and repose. It rose a little above the modern bustle. It was patronized by both the old and the new world—men who came to fish or to paint, motorists who stayed to eat and to sleep. A remarkable inn, and remarkably well run, it contained for the very few who had the inward eye a rather remarkable woman.

  Everyone, or at least every man, who put up at the Cressford Arms noticed Elizabeth Royle. She was the head-waitress; she had held the post for five years. A dark woman, tall, superbly built, with a fine carriage of the shoulders and the head, she made the dining-room of the Cressford Arms a notable room. She was austere, serene, stately, gentle, moving like a priestess, large eyed and calm. She carried a wreath of magnificent black hair.

  Grimshaw had noticed her on the very first night. That is to say, she had arrested his attention.

  “You are alone, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you staying more than a night?”

  “A month, perhaps.”

  She had placed him at a little table in a far corner by one of the windows, one of the tables that she reserved for the elect. Richard Grimshaw was not a man to be given any sort of occasional corner. She had known that at once. She knew as much about men as a woman
could know, placing them instantly in their respective categories of nice fools, mere fools, and nasty fools. She despised men in the mass, but she knew her gentleman when she saw him, and Grimshaw was more than a gentleman.

  He arrested her attention just as she arrested his. She was aware of him without appearing to be aware of anything but a room full of people. She showed him the same calm, impersonal courtesy; and he, looking up into her clear pale face with its deep dark eyes set well apart, wondered a little.

  “A damned fine woman”—that was the average man’s inward comment, but Grimshaw’s impression of her was both more simple and more subtle. He had spent his life in watching birds and animals, untarnished creatures of the wilds, and this tall woman with her dignity and her wreath of sombre hair had the flexible and calm beauty of a leopardess. She had physical perfection—but how much else had she? He began to watch.

  Her dignity was her most striking quality. It seemed strange in such a place and among such people. She served like a high priestess, impassive yet gentle, blind to all that she did not wish to see, but Grimshaw guessed that she saw everything. She knew human nature, and yet did not despise it. She might think of men as fools, but as fool boys to be smiled at with wise indulgence.

  “Woman,” was the word that described her to Grimshaw, just “woman,” lacking any superfluous adjective, a woman with noble hair and breasts, standing out above a crowd of little wenches with their little heads stuffed into little hats, and as like as peas—inside and out.

  His attitude to her was supremely natural but unusual. It was instinctive. Whenever he entered the dining-room he gave her a slight bow, and she—standing tall and calm—would give him a faint smile and an inclination of the head. They met and acknowledged each other like natural aristocrats, with a dignity that often characterizes people of the wilds.

  “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “What have you—for breakfast?”

  “The usual things, sir.”

  He touched in her a sense of humour, slightly ironical, concealed, like wholesome inward laughter.

  The usual things for the usual people.

  He looked up and into her eyes that were steady but unbold.

  “Porridge.”

  “Porridge, sir.”

  “Bacon and eggs.”

  “Bacon and eggs, sir.”

  She smiled suddenly.

  “It seems as strange to you, sir, as it does to me.”

  “The same people and the same eggs and bacon?”

  She placed a vase of fresh roses on the table.

  “Like clothes, sir, habits are like clothes. You don’t take sugar with your porridge, sir.”

  “No; thank you.”

  On successive evenings he watched her deal with various sorts of men: a fat and ruddy fellow who smiled up at her with bulging eyes and a gleam of artificial teeth; a young buck over from Plymouth who attempted to call her “Bessie,” a polished person with an eyeglass and wearing a dinner jacket. She was polite to them all, effacingly polite. She was like a fine statue. The male effervescence broke at her feet, seemingly unnoticed.

  Grimshaw wondered. Was she supremely wise, or had she a life of her own? And then he caught himself up in the midst of his wonderings. What did it matter to him?

  But it did matter, because she was woman, and he—a lonely man increasingly aware of his loneliness—wished to reverence woman. A man who has lived much with nature and marvelled at her works is made for reverence.

  He noticed that when she came to his table her serene face lost its austerity. She seemed to put off a mask. She was woman.

  They would exchange a few words. Each was finding out about the other without the other fully realizing it.

  “It has been a good day, sir.”

  “Splendid—on the moor.”

  “Either one loves it or fears it. Will you have thick or clear soup, sir?”

  “Clear, please. I spent half the morning watching a pair of hawks.”

  “Do you ever watch sea-birds, sir?”

  “Sometimes. Down at Mullion the gulls seemed to cry all day and night.”

  “Yes—at Mullion. I was born five miles from Mullion. We had a little farm near there.”

  His picture of her grew. He thought of her as a tall, long-legged, wild-haired girl living in one of those lonely little white places where the stone walls were all purple with foxgloves. He could see her running about the cliffs and among the bracken.

  “Do you ever go back there?”

  “Everybody is dead, sir.”

  That evening he noticed her hands. They were large and white and firm, clean and courageous hands. He noticed too that she wore no ring. He caught himself feeling pleased about the absence of a ring.

  An evening or two later it was she who asked a question.

  “Are you writing a book here, sir?”

  He glanced at her quickly. How did she know that he wrote books?

  “No—not quite quiet enough here. Do you get time to read books?”

  “Sometimes, sir.”

  “Any favourites?”

  “Mr. Galsworthy’s. He is a great man, sir. He understands so many people—different people.”

  “That’s true.”

  He was astonished. And yet why should she not appreciate a fine human document, she a fine and human woman? She knew what life and work were, yes, better than some little conservatory creature could know it.

  When she brought him his porridge next morning she stood beside the table, looking down at the white cloth.

  “The quietest room in the hotel will be vacant to-night, sir—old Mr. Crossby is going back to London—if you want a quiet room to write in.”

  “Thanks—I do; I suppose if I ask the manageress—she will let me have it?”

  “Of course.”

  He was grateful to her.

  “That’s the great problem these days—peace, a quiet corner. Even on the moor——”

  “I know,” she said. “Char-à-bancs, motor-bicycles! You have been used to great, silent spaces——And to write books——”

  “Oh, I’m not always writing books, Miss Royle. I like my share of life. But the quiet corner to think in—that’s the problem.”

  “It always is for a man,” she said.

  Grimshaw seemed to reflect. Then he said:

  “I am looking about now for a little cabin, a centre of gravity. I want it high up, with a view of the sea—and yet sheltered. Do you happen to know of a possible place?”

  “I don’t think that there is anything in Tawbridge, sir. Should you want it all the year?”

  “No; I travel a good deal, but not as much as I did. I am beginning to hanker for a little cove where you can beach your boat.”

  She understood him and his needs as instinctively as he had understood her dignity, and if she had waited years for such a man she knew him when chance brought him to her.

  Grimshaw was less sure, but he did not doubt as a snob doubts. He walked twenty miles that day, and lay on a round barrow under the blue tent of the sky, and saw all the moor and the sea spread out before him. He meditated.

  “Rather late in life to choose such a mate. I am forty-nine, and I suppose she is about eight-and-twenty. A woman of the people. No; just woman. What would she want? Rooms on a sea-front, a band, two deck-chairs, and twice a week—the pictures. Bright clothes. And I——? I should correspond to a youth with no hat, his hair in a mop, the collar of his tennis shirt flopping over the collar of his coat. Rather dirty flannel trousers, and perhaps—black boots!”

  He felt the spaces of sea and sky and moor, and knew himself to be lonely, and more than lonely. He wanted to take root on a hilltop.

  “Well, risk it. All life is taking risks. Rooms on a sea-front—and a band! Be thorough.”

  Grimshaw bought a little second-hand car at a local garage, and in two days he had learnt to drive it, and Elizabeth Royle—thinking of him as a man of the forests
and the mountains—wondered at his purchase. Perhaps he had bought it to carry him in search of his upland cabin and the quiet cove where he could beach his boat?

  The car had a double purpose. He disclosed it when he knew himself master of the machine. He came in late for dinner, and he was the last to finish, sitting solitary in his corner. Elizabeth was busy at her silver table; the two other girls were out of the room.

  Grimshaw called to her.

  “Miss Royle——”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She came and stood by his table. He looked up at her gravely, this Elizabethan woman with her loyal eyes and stately head.

  “I have a favour to ask you.”

  She was silent.

  “I am driving over to Widmouth one day. Would you come?”

  They looked at each other.

  For her—it was her crisis—her proving of the one man.

  “I am free to-morrow afternoon, sir.”

  “Thank you. You will come? I am very glad. Shall we say half-past two? I will have the car at the door.”

  He saw something—a question—a pride expectant in her eyes.

  “The hotel entrance, sir?”

  “Of course.”

  She coloured. This was homage, the gesture of the man and the gentleman. She glowed. He had never seen her look as she looked now, gently proud, beneficent, happy.

  “I shall be ready, Mr. Grimshaw. Thank you.”

  She went to her room, and sat down at the little table upon which her mirror stood. She rested her chin on her hands and looked and looked. She was exultant, tender.

  “To him—I give—everything—if he wishes it.”

  She dreamed awhile. She smiled. How differently he had come to her. How differently other men would have done it. A surreptitious smirk in a corner. “I say—Bessie, come out for a drive. I’ll pick you up on the Widmouth road—what! How will that suit you?” The tactful, surreptitious cad! And she was going to walk down the steps of the Cressfield Arms like a gentlewoman, under the eyes of her own world, and step into his car. She would do it. He should have no cause to feel ashamed of her.

  He had not. He was standing beside the car, holding a rug. The hall was full of people; Thompson the porter was at the door. She came down the steps, deliberate and self-composed, dressed very simply in black. Her face had a proud but gentle radiance.