The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping

by Warwick Deeping

  “What—mansions, Miss?”

  “Mozart Mansions.”

  “Never heard of them, Miss. Sure you have got the name right?”

  She wondered.

  A week passed. Mr. Jacks, still dreaming forlorn dreams, descended the stairs from the offices of Messrs. Samson & Cragg, and went in search of lunch. He was later than usual. He was about to pass through the glass doors of the familiar tea-shop when he had to stand aside for a girl who was coming out.

  They stared at each other. Both of them felt scared and astonished, confused and glad, but the girl betrayed very little, the man much. He blushed. He looked miserable. He began an impulsive stammer.

  “Miss Stuart——!”

  “Fancy—meeting—you here——!”

  “Yes—funny, isn’t it——”

  “Still busy with your lawyers?”

  He swallowed hard, and his blue eyes entreated her.

  “Look here, I have something to tell you, I must tell you I have been an awful cad. Can’t we go somewhere for five minutes——?”

  She looked at the building opposite.

  “Perhaps. But where? We can walk—— What about London Bridge?”

  “Oh, anywhere——”

  “But have you had lunch?”

  “I don’t want any lunch.”

  He made his confession, and she listened but without that air of hauteur which is supposed to decorate the aristocrat, and without appearing bored. He poured it all out, the story of his little human adventure. For once in his life he had determined to feel like a man of the world; he had squandered half a small legacy on that holiday at Grandville.

  “I wanted to feel what it was like, you know, doing the thing first class for once. I never allowed—for you. I thought it wouldn’t matter. Just a few days harmless bluff. But then—you know——”

  He stared at the river, and she was smiling, but not as a superior young person smiles.

  “And then——?”

  “I found that it did matter. I felt that I had done a caddish, cheap sort of thing. Just lied to you, and I had to go on lying. I knew I should never see you again. I am just a stockbroker’s clerk, and I live at Putney. My name is Jacks—all right, but I have never been in Dorsetshire. Well, that’s that.”

  He glanced at her profile, and wondered whether she would be very contemptuous.

  She asked him a question.

  “Did you go to Ashley Gardens?”

  “I did walk round there one evening, just to feel what it was like to be where you were. But I never intended——”

  She asked him a second question.

  “Do you think that young women who live in Ashley Gardens lunch at city bun-shops?”

  His blue eyes seemed to widen.

  “No; but——”

  “I don’t live at Ashley Gardens.”

  “You don’t——?”

  “I live at Highbury. I’m a typist in a lawyer’s office in Broad Street. This is the first time that I have been to that particular place for lunch.”

  It was her turn to stare at the river.

  “Good lord!” said he, “you don’t mean to tell me——”

  “We both hit on the same idea, my dear. Trying to seem and feel like somebodies for a fortnight. And we are just nobodies—both of us. We are quits.”

  Her eyes searched for his, and his eyes were intent on the same quest. They looked at each other; they smiled; they burst into sudden laughter.

  “Oh—I say—I’m glad, most frightfully glad——”

  “It is a relief—isn’t it?”

  “Old thing, I’ve been feeling rotten, a hopeless, helpless, swindling sort of beast. And we are just nobodies—— Though—of course—you could never be a nobody—Iris—I mean—not to——”

  “Jacko,” she said, “don’t you think you had better go and have some lunch? I have twenty minutes. I could manage a cup of coffee.”

  They returned to their tea-shop, and the rush being over, they managed to obtain a table to themselves. They sat and looked at each other like consenting, carefree lovers.

  “I say, Iris, what about—I mean if the weather keeps as it is—next Sunday—on the river. Would you come?”

  “I’d love to.”

  THE BROKEN VIOLIN

  Martin Hardy was in a bad temper, which state may be excusable even when a man is a successful author, and that most atrocious of outcasts a world’s best-seller. The critics had begun to show prejudice against Hardy. They had praised his work when a book of his had sold some fifteen hundred copies, but now when a novel by Hardy was marketed by the hundred thousand they treated him as an excrescence.

  But Hardy was not in a bad temper because of the critics. As a craftsman he knew that the work that they now belittled was better than the obscure stuff they had patronized. He was considerably rich, and in spite of it he still loved his work. He had rented for the winter the Villa Flora at Cap d’Or, and the Villa Flora was all violets and orange trees and blue sea and nicely tempered warmth.

  Hardy’s irritability had other origins. Probably, success lay a little heavy on his stomach. Too much dining out, too many cocktails, too many dances. The craft of the creator, delicate and whimsical, was refusing to spread its wings, because the man in Hardy was weighing it down with feet of clay.

  He sat at his desk in the window of his writing-room. The garden below him was a big bowl of beauty set on the edge of the sea. The house was as silent as a sleeping cat. Yet Hardy sat and fumed and fidgeted. The stuff would not come. He had had a week of exasperating and inarticulate emptiness.

  His senses felt overstrung. He was irritated by the passing of the trains a quarter of a mile away, and by the cars on the Corniche road. Angrily he had got up and swatted a sleepy and wandering fly.

  And suddenly he became aware of another sound, the squeaking of a violin being played somewhere in the road at the bottom of the garden. He looked out of his window.

  “Damn the fellow!”

  For the itinerant fiddler had sat himself down on a camp-stool in a sunny patch just outside Hardy’s gates. He was scraping away sedulously; an empty tin deposited at his feet waited for the clinking of coins.

  Hardy made for the door. Here was a discord upon which he could vent his irritation, something tangible that could be dealt with, and not like the trains and the cars. He did not ring for that excellent fellow, Sandys, his valet-butler. He went down through the garden, and pushed open one leaf of the iron gates.

  “Hallo! you can’t make that noise here.”

  Even while uttering the words he realized that the violinist was blind. The raised eyes were covered with a film of whiteness which gave them a queer, staring, and almost reproachful look, and the man’s blindness somehow added to Hardy’s irritation, because it interposed itself between the scapegoat and his anger.

  “I am sorry, monsieur.”

  The man was shabby and thin. He had a dim look. He wore a black felt hat, and an old frock-coat buttoned tightly. The lids had closed over his sightless eyes, and there was something about his face that both surprised and shocked Martin Hardy. The face seemed to dream; it wore an expression of gentle resignation; it had a kind of dusty radiance.

  Also, it annoyed Hardy, and annoyed the angry man in him. It was as though the face of this shabby fellow accused him of a futile, fuming egotism. It made him feel inferior.

  He said:

  “I’m sorry, but you can’t play your violin here. There are plenty of other places.”

  The man smiled faintly.

  “Is someone ill, monsieur?”

  Ill! Yes, someone was ill, the craftsman in Hardy. And with a twinge of resentment, he told a white lie. He blurted it out.

  “Yes; someone is ill.”

  “I am sorry, monsieur. Had I known I would not have disturbed the sick person. I will go somewhere else.”

  The fiddle-case lay on the path beside him. He groped for it, laid it on his knees, and with a kind of lovin
g carefulness proceeded to put his bow and violin away. One of his hands appeared to be deformed, and Hardy, watching him, was attacked by compassion and remorse.

  He brought out his pocket-book, and extracted three ten-franc notes.

  “Here, take these.”

  It was both a bribe and an offering, and as the man’s fingers felt for the notes the anger in Hardy died away.

  “Poor devil!” he thought.

  The violinist’s face was raised.

  “Thank you, monsieur, thank you very much. You are very kind. I apologize for having made a disturbance.”

  “Oh, that’s all right.”

  Hardy stood mute, feeling that this shabby fellow had shown a magnanimity and a sympathy that put him to shame. He, the sensitive craftsman, the man who pretended to despise material things, had bribed this poor devil to go away. He stood and watched the man fold up his stool, and sling it round his neck by the loop of cord that was attached to it. A crooked stick hung on the railings. The violinist felt for it, and tucking his violin-case under his arm, prepared to depart.

  “Good morning, monsieur.”

  Hardy came out of his stare.

  “One moment, you have forgotten your tin.”

  “So I have, monsieur. But there is nothing in it.”

  Hardy picked up the tin. It had a loop of string attached to it, and the blind man held out the hand with the stick.

  “Would you be so kind as to slip it over my wrist, monsieur.”

  Hardy did so.

  “Thank you. Good morning, monsieur.”

  “Good morning.”

  The novelist returned to the Villa Flora feeling displeased with himself, for he realized that this shabby fellow had behaved much better than he had.

  Two or three days passed and Martin Hardy’s inspiration still hung in the air like a bunch of grapes beyond his reach. Something had failed in him; he could not see things vividly as he was accustomed to see them; it was as though a crust had formed upon the sensitive surface of his inner consciousness.

  He was restless, troubled, and perhaps just a little scared, and suddenly haunted by the particular dread of the imaginative writer. Had he written himself out? When wealth and luxury and liberty arrived, was it possible that your familiar spirit took to flight and left you no more than a successful carcase?

  Hardy walked in his garden. The flowers were there for his pleasure; the white villa was a delightful pleasure house; he had, or could command, most of the things that a man desires. And he was conscious of a feeling of emptiness, as though the joy and the virtue of creation had gone out of him.

  He went out into Cap d’Or to spend a luxurious and easy hour at the barber’s, and by one of the white pillars of the Hôtel Splendid he saw the blind violinist seated on his stool, and putting his violin away in its case. One of the porters of the “Splendid” stood over him. Someone in the hotel had complained, and the blind violinist was being requested to move on.

  “Poor devil!” thought Hardy; “always making a noise, and always being moved on. While I——!”

  He obeyed the sudden impulse. He crossed the road and spoke to the blind man.

  “Excuse me, perhaps you remember playing outside the Villa Flora?”

  “I remember monsieur’s voice.”

  “If you wish you can use the villa gateway.”

  “Then the patient is better, monsieur?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am glad. It is very good of monsieur.”

  “Not a bit.”

  “I should like to sit by your gate next week, monsieur, for it will be the week of the tennis tournament, and people will pass that way from the station.”

  “By all means use it then.”

  “I am grateful to monsieur.”

  Hardy went on to the barber’s, and it seemed to him that the hands of Alphonse were more dexterous and soothing than usual; or was it that he had been inwardly soothed by the making of a magnanimous gesture? From the caresses of Alphonse he returned to lunch and the ministrations of the superlative Sandys, and after lunch he dozed in his chaise-longue in the loggia. When he woke it was with a feeling of being rested and renewed, and to the sound of a violin being played. He smiled. So the fellow had taken him at his word.

  Tea arrived; and after tea Hardy lit a pipe and went to his desk in the big window to write. His inner consciousness had cleared; it was as spacious as that window and full of the sea and the sky; life came to him to be set down on paper. He was aware of the peaceful exultation of the creator, and through his imaginings the sound of the violin played like a breeze through trees. It had ceased to be noise, and discord. It made a little plaintive murmuring at the back of his mind. It was both human and mysterious.

  The violinist was visible to him beyond the white gate, but instead of distracting Hardy’s attention the blind man was a figure of meaning. So, life played blindly upon its fiddle, sometimes with a resigned gentleness, sometimes with notes of pathos or of passion.

  Hardy’s pen ran on, but happening to glance up at the end of a paragraph, he saw a woman standing beside the violinist. She, too, was dressed in black, and her back was turned towards the villa. The violinist was putting his instrument away. Obviously the woman had come to take him home.

  “His wife, I suppose,” thought Hardy, and went on writing till the vivid dusk, still sunset-stained, made lights inevitable.

  On the following morning he wrote from nine o’clock till twelve, with the blind man’s violin keeping him company. People paused occasionally and dropped coins into the violinist’s tin. Lunch arrived, and the hour of the siesta, but when Hardy woke from it he heard that thin and plaintive sound still threading the silence.

  In a little while Sandys would appear with the tea-tray. The sun lay hot on Cap d’Or, but in the loggia a perfumed coolness lingered, the fragrance of mimosa, and it occurred to Hardy that the blind fellow had been sitting for hours in the sun and scraping continuously at those strings. Tea in the shade was not included in the programme of poverty. But why not ask the poor devil in and give him tea?

  It seemed a sound suggestion and Hardy got out of his chaise-longue, and walked down through the garden to the white gates. He spoke to the violinist who was resting, with his instrument laid across his knees.

  “Good afternoon. Don’t you find it rather hot out there?”

  The man’s face was raised.

  “It is better than the snow, when your feet ache or are dead.”

  “Well, that’s philosophy. Would you care to come in and have some tea with me?”

  “Monsieur is very kind.”

  “Surely not. Too much sun can make one selfish.”

  “I will come in with pleasure, monsieur.”

  “Let me give you a hand.”

  “Oh, I can manage, monsieur. But if you would guide me. Gardens are puzzling places to the blind.”

  “Of course.”

  Sandys, hearing the bell ring, came out to the loggia for orders, and found his master and the shabby person sitting together in the shade.

  “Tea for two, Sandys.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Now that he had him seated in a chair Hardy looked more attentively at his guest. The violinist had taken off his hat. His black hair had no grey in it, and his face was unlined; he was comparatively young, probably not more than five-and-thirty. He had an air of breeding; he sat there at his ease, as though he felt himself in pleasant surroundings and appreciated them.

  “You must have a big garden, monsieur.”

  “Fairly so. The mimosa is smelling. The more noise there is in the world, the more one asks for the protection of flowers.”

  “Yes, noise; it is one of the modern catastrophes. One should have earlids as well as eyelids.”

  Sandys arrived with the tea-tray, and there was a lemon on the tray, for Hardy sometimes took a slice of lemon in his tea instead of milk. He sent Sandys away, after signing to him to place a small table beside the violinist’s chair
.

  “How do you like your tea?”

  “I suppose monsieur has not a lemon?”

  “But I have.”

  “You see, I am Russian.”

  “Then we will both have lemon. I expect you have recognized me as English by my French.”

  “Monsieur speaks French very well.”

  “That is very polite of you.”

  Hardy placed the tea-cup on the table beside the Russian’s chair, and the violinist made him a little bow, and felt for the cup. His hands appeared slightly deformed, the left one more so than the right, the fingers straight and stiff and pressed together. There were scars on the man’s wrists, and Hardy found himself wondering how he was able to manage his instrument.

  “You have played the violin for many years?”

  “Since I was seven, monsieur.”

  He smiled.

  “You have noticed my hands, perhaps?”

  “Yes; a result of the war?”

  “The war after the war. I am an exile.”

  He sipped his tea, and his blind eyes seemed to dream.

  “Man is a strange creature, monsieur. If you are interested in music you may have heard the name of Metchnikoff.”

  “The scientist? Yes; but I remember, too, there was a young violinist who was becoming the rage. I heard him in Paris.”

  “I am Metchnikoff, monsieur.”

  “You!”

  “Yes; the ghost of him.”

  Hardy put down his tea-cup, and stared. The Russian spoke with a calmness that had the resigned finality of the snow-covered steppes.

  “How did it happen?”

  “You see—I was a bourgeois, monsieur. Also, in Russia in those days when the savage beast broke loose it was a jealous beast. I had skill, and a reputation, and in Russia the beast desired to trample upon anything that was not of the soil and the gutter. They put me in prison. They did not ask me to play the violin to them. They put out my eyes, and cut some of the tendons of my hands.”

  Hardy’s face looked shocked.

  “Good God! It sounds incredible.”

  “But it happened, monsieur. Such things happened in Russia. They turned me out into the streets. I wished to die.”

  “And yet you lived. And you are here. How?”