“I had a wife, monsieur. She rescued me. She suffered incredible things, but she managed to smuggle me away to the south. The White Army was there then. Later, we found ourselves at Constantinople. Oh, that was a terrible city, terrible for women. Among other exiles we were helped to travel to the west. My wife had some jewels left. We came here, and have been here ever since.”
“And you manage to play the violin.”
“I play it like a ghost, monsieur, as best I can.”
“What courage!”
The words escaped from Hardy as though they had been forced from him by the pressure of this other man’s tragedy, but the Russian smiled gently, and made a movement of the hands.
“Courage? Oh, well, monsieur, it is possible to come to the end of one’s self, and to stand on the edge of an empty sea. But nothing remains empty. The child may be left alive in you, and the sun shines, and there may be love. And something stirs. You think and reflect; you dream. Nothing more terrible can happen to you than that which has happened. Besides, you may have somebody else to think of.”
“Your wife?”
“Even so. She is a miracle. And now, monsieur, I must be returning to my place by your gate, for my wife will be coming for me, and she will wonder where I have flown.”
Hardy rose from his chair. No longer did he regard the Russian as a poor, shabby scraper of fiddle strings, but as the wreck of a great artist, a man who still had music in his soul. Besides, what courage, what philosophy! He picked up the instrument case, and offered Metchnikoff his arm.
“Hold on to me; the steps are rather difficult. One, two, three, that’s it. I’ll guide you down to the gate.”
“Thank you. You have not told me your name, monsieur.”
“My name is Hardy. I write books.”
“Ah, you too are a great artist. You understand.”
“A little. And one learns. So you will sit here until your wife comes?”
“Vera is punctual.”
“We must repeat this affair. Perhaps your wife will join us one afternoon.”
Metchnikoff sat down on his stool.
“Perhaps, monsieur. But she goes out very little; she keeps very much to herself. Besides, she works; she is a seamstress. Au revoir, monsieur.”
The Metchnikoffs lived in a tiny flat at the top of a tall tenement house in the working-class quarters of Cap d’Or. That they were desperately poor goes without saying, and since Paul had no eyes to see with, his wife’s eyes had to look forward into that curve of shadow that was to-morrow. They were the saddest of dark eyes, and when, on the Sunday, she came with her husband to Hardy’s villa, the novelist wondered at her confrontation of the world. For she was one of those very gentle creatures with a soft pallor, and without a harsh line on her face. She had white hair, and its whiteness was a most strange garland above the face of her youth.
Hardy gave them tea in the loggia. He found himself looking at Vera Metchnikoff with a sympathy that had divined in her something strange and elusive. It was as though this creature with gazelle’s eyes could not bear the eyes of a man to rest too frankly upon her. It was as though she had suffered so much from men, from the brute and the hunter in man, during those Russian days and afterwards.
Hardy found himself moved to great gentleness, for it seemed to him that these two exiles were like timid creatures in a cage.
“You, too, will take lemon in your tea, madame?”
“Please, monsieur, I prefer milk.”
She looked at him intently for a moment, and he thought how like her skin was to creamy milk, and those two eyes were like dark flowers floating in it. But her gaze was questioning. It appraised. It was the searching, and half-alarmed glance of the animal that has been hunted. It had both a desperate courage and the shadow of an ever present fear. It said to Hardy:
“What manner of man are you? Are you like all those others? My husband is blind. There have been those who have tried to take advantage of his blindness. Have pity.”
And in Hardy, the man that loathed cruelty, the savagery of trap and gun, understood and answered. He could not put his intuitions into speech. This woman defended herself and her blind mate. She said to the savage world:
“Have pity. Do not make use of me as a thing to be hunted.”
He set himself to reassure her. He talked a lot of playful nonsense, and purposely he made his French execrable; he thought it would amuse her, and put her at her ease. He apologized for not being able to speak Russian, or to read Dostoievsky in the original. He handed round cakes, and afterwards he asked Paul to play to them, but not as he played to the idlers of Cap d’Or. He stood with his back to the loggia and his eyes on the garden while the blind man gave them a thing of Stravinsky’s.
At the end Hardy applauded softly.
“Madame, your husband will always have the hands of the master.”
He went and patted Metchnikoff’s shoulder.
“You should be in an opera house again, not on that stool. The world should be applauding your courage as well as your music.”
If he spoke and behaved a little extravagantly, and shed for the occasion the exactitudes of the Englishman, he felt that the pose was of value. These people were his guests, exiles, birds in a cage, and he wanted to win their confidence.
It was he who helped the blind man down the steps and guided him to the gate.
“We must repeat this tea-party. Perhaps, some day, you would consent to play to some of my friends.”
Metchnikoff looked happy.
“Monsieur understands.”
Hardy held out a hand to the wife.
“I hope that madame understands—also?”
She looked up at him rather like a child whose trust has been won. She smiled.
“Yes, monsieur. In this house one is not afraid.”
The week of the Tennis Tournament arrived at Cap d’Or, bringing people from Cannes and Nice and Monte Carlo and Mentone. They came by car and they came by train, the fortunate and the wealthy, crowding to be amused by Miss Molly This and Monsieur Jean That.
It was a crowd that hurried restlessly hither and thither, worshipping the god of the proud flesh. It knew nothing of the Metchnikoffs of this world, of the little broken makers of music. “Ping-pong” went the rackets on the courts of the Hôtel Splendid—“Ping-pong,” and hundreds of faces turned this way and turned that, and on the first day of the tournament the blind violinist collected seventeen francs and forty-five centimes in his tin. People were in a hurry to get to their seats, or to eat and to return from eating to those same seats. Ping-Pong. Metchnikoff’s violin maintained a little, gentle, sad complaining.
On the second day the tragedy occurred. Metchnikoff, venturing out by himself, fell down the steps of the apartment house and broke his violin. He broke it utterly and disastrously, and beyond all possible repair, for he had been carrying it in its cover instead of in its case. He bruised an elbow and cut his chin, but these were mere physical happenings. In breaking the violin he had broken himself.
Hardy, in whom the full tide of creation was flowing in spite of tennis tournaments and crowds of well-dressed women, missed the plaintive persuasions of the violin. Well, perhaps Metchnikoff had found a better place for his stool, and Hardy went on working. He spent one afternoon on the courts and saw an Austrian Count lose his temper and break his racket, and was amused. Did such things matter? Rackets could be easily replaced, and tempers recovered at cocktail hour.
Four days passed, and Hardy began to wonder. He told himself that he ought to look up the Russians. He finished a chapter after tea, and put on a coat, and went out to see the moon rise. Diana was full circle. She would rise up out of the sea, shooting her arrows across the water and spreading before her the swift splendour of her silver sandals.
Hardy strolled to the Aux des Fleurs. It had avenues of palm and pepper trees and mimosa; it scattered soft shadows; it was mysterious at such an hour. It was the promenade of the lovers, and also of those ex
quisite ladies who went where wealth went, and who gave to the adventure of life a provoking perfume. They, too, strolled under the trees, and sat on seats, and waited with a veiled boldness for the idle male. To Hardy they were like exotic flowers offering their pale faces in the dusk. They did not tempt him; they were just part of the decorative scheme of this very artificial world.
The moon rose out of the sea. She came up all huge and gold, and Hardy, having stood to watch this birth of Venus, turned and walked on. Someone else moved, and rising from a seat under the trees, seemed fortuitously to cross his path. Two eyes looked at him from a dim, white face; almost he caught the murmur of an invitation.
He stopped, and so did the woman. The recognition was instant. Her eyes were like two circles of glass, expressionless save for a stare of dismay, and for the moment her frightened eyes paralysed Hardy. Then, he grabbed at his hat.
“Madame——”
But she turned about like a figure twirling on a string. Her divergence to accost him had been silent and sudden, and her flight was just as silent and sudden. She fled, and Hardy stood holding his hat. He was shocked, but her flight had shocked him more than her attack.
He gave way to impulse; he pursued. She could not continue to run; the very nature of things forbade such headlong confusion, and Hardy walked faster than she did. He caught her up; he trailed after her like a shadow.
“Madame, I wanted to ask you why I had not seen your husband.”
She stopped; she turned about and faced him.
“What do you wish, monsieur?”
He made himself smile.
“Surely—we misunderstand each other. You ran away because you thought that I was a stranger. Oh, well, we are people of the world. I apologize for startling you. Surely, you remember?”
Her eyes were fixed on his face.
“Yes—I remember. That is why——”
And then she collapsed on a seat, the last seat but one before the shops and the hotels began. She seemed to shrink into the thin darkness, to gather it round her like an inadequate garment.
“Something has happened. That is why——”
Hardy sat down, but not too close to her.
“Perhaps I can guess. Your husband is ill.”
“No, not ill.”
“Tell me.”
“He has broken his violin.”
So, that was it! But what a tragedy; for, obviously, violins did not fall from the sky, and mute strings meant no money. Yes; but that was to regard the affair merely as a financial disaster, and it was so much more than that. How easy it was to be a little god when you happened to be one of the world’s spoilt children, whereas this woman had no short stories to sell at two hundred guineas apiece.
The silence had lasted too long, and he was aware of her acute distress.
He asked her:
“How did it happen?”
“He fell down the stairs.”
“And the violin was broken.”
“Yes. And without it——”
Her words were like drops of blood. They made Hardy feel most intensely uncomfortable. He was accused by the fact that she should have to explain to a comparative stranger that which was so sacred and secret.
He said:
“I must discover this—I must discover this for myself.”
She was puzzled.
“I will call on your husband to-morrow. He will tell me. I shall pretend not to know. You see, madame, I have been one of the fortunate people; the world insists on giving me so much money. But I shall consider it an honour if your husband will accept from me another violin.”
Hurriedly he stood up. He uncovered his head, and gave her a little, self-conscious bow.
“Good night, madame. Your husband will see me to-morrow.”
He walked off. He did not give her time to reply. He had a feeling that she wanted to be left there alone to settle her ruffled plumage. Besides, it was so necessary that he should make it plain to her that he did not belong to the hunting fraternity, nor to the commercialists who buy song-birds in wire cages.
He felt hot and upset.
“Damn! It is rather a beastly world at times. Of course—you might argue that one was wasting one’s pity, and that the woman—— But she isn’t.”
So Hardy called on Paul Metchnikoff and heard all about the tragedy of the broken violin, and then got into a taxi and drove to Nice. He managed to buy a violin, and he drove back with it to Cap d’Or, and climbed the stairs to the fifth story. He found Metchnikoff alone, and made his presentation.
“As one artist to another—you will permit me to replace that which was broken.”
He placed the violin in the blind Russian’s hands.
“Monsieur, it is incredible. You are too generous.”
“Oh, no; the honour is conferred by him who accepts.”
Hardy did not like seeing a man in tears. He got himself out of the room, but half way down the stairs he met Vera ascending. He became genial, boyish, casual almost.
“That’s all right. I managed to get hold of a violin. Listen, I believe you can hear him playing it.”
He smiled. He made way for her to pass him and go up to her husband. Her eyes were hidden. She went up three steps, and then paused to look back at him.
“You are a good man, monsieur. You have pity.”
THE SON
I
Old English!”
He sat in the front row of the dress-circle, an Englishman from Africa, watching the evolving of John Galsworthy’s play. His face was the face of a man who had lived much alone. His sympathy with “old Sylvanus” included a grim element of self-pity, for the play sharpened the point of his own problem. He was moved by its blunt vigour. The very blood of it was blood of his blood.
“Old English!”
York found himself in the street, trying to move swiftly through a crowd that clogged his swiftness. He jostled somebody and apologized; hailed a taxi and climbed in.
“Waterloo.”
“Right, sir.”
He lay back in the taxi and dreamed; but his dream was unlike a dream in that it had an inevitable purpose, for out there in Algeria a hunger had entered this Englishman’s heart. He was reasonably rich in worldly goods; the life out there in that half-wild country had suited a man who had forsworn women because a woman had made a bitter fool of him many years ago.
He had his horses and his vineyards, his pinewoods and cedar groves, his maquis covered hills, his dogs and servants—but he had no son. It had made him restless, discontented.
Alone in the corner of a first-class carriage, York watched the flicker of the lights and the drift of the dark country. His eyes had an inward light, as though the final purpose had been lit in him, and the action of the play seemed to penetrate his thoughts.
English blood. Breed. He believed in breed—especially when he remembered the bastard crowd of a Mediterranean town. This son of his should be pure Nordic, big limbed, big headed, like one of those old Norse wanderers. He had come to England for the sake of the breed, and to look at the English women, not for the love of a woman, but to find the mother of his son.
At a quarter past seven he was driving from Greenchurch station to Hookfield House. His aunt, Philippa York, lived at Hookfield House—where the Yorks had lived for many generations—a high-browed, high-coloured, prodigious old gentlewoman whom most people feared. Her nephew did not fear her.
At eight o’clock York faced his aunt at the end of an immensely long mahogany table. She looked to him like a distant figure in a portrait, and their voices seemed to meet in the silence of the great room, the silence of the deep country on a winter night. Panton, the butler, shuffled discreetly through the silence, and from the walls dead Yorks looked down on them.
When Panton had gone, leaving York his port and his walnuts, York made his announcement.
“I am going to marry one of the Shenton girls.”
His voice sounded casual, but some men’s casualness
hides the hardened purpose. He was extracting a walnut from its shell. His aunt’s voice came back to him across the length of silence.
“Which Miss Shenton?”
He had expected a shocked note, and he was surprised at its absence.
“The copper-headed one.”
“That is Elizabeth, is it not?”
“Yes.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty-six. I’m marrying health. That is to say, if she’ll have me. I want children.”
Miss York, posed like a Queen Elizabeth, looked steadfastly at her nephew. She liked courage, a courage that knows its own mind. The terror that she inspired was largely the terror of insincerity confronted by a Britannia who loathed humbug.
“A very sensible decision, Byron, so far as your future children are concerned. I presume that you are going back to Mida?”
“Certainly.”
He was surprised. He had expected a combat, for though the Shentons of Beech Hangar Farm were respectable people, they were plain farmers.
“Does the girl know?”
“I have been there—once or twice. How much do women guess——?”
His aunt smiled at him.
“My dear Ronny, if you have been looking her over like a horse-breeder in search of a pedigree stock——”
“Well, I have, rather. She’s a fine, gentle creature.”
“Good lord!” said the old lady.
She looked curiously at her nephew; she was fond of him, and fondness gives insight; she was a mixture of cynicism and of understanding.
“There is the woman’s point of view,” she said.
York lit a cigarette, and his rather swarthy face showed no emotion. His aunt noted this apparent absence of emotion. She believed that her nephew could be capable of being very deeply moved. Lonely men run to depth rather than to shallowness.
“She’s the sort of woman—who will be happy—if she has children.”
“Are you going to tell her that, Ronny?”
“Oh, not quite so crudely. She’s a good girl—I think.”
“Has it occurred to you—that she might be too good—for you?”
He raised his eyes.
The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping Page 84