by R. A. Dick
“I don’t see why you should suppose all that,” said Lucy. “I have met Madame Lachinsky and she is very charming.”
“No doubt,” said Eva, “but if I were you I should keep my eye on her—and Anna. I must say I was surprised when I heard that you had let the child go off to London alone. Really, Lucy, you should be with her.”
“Martha is looking after her,” said Lucy stiffly.
“That common old cook you had when you were first married?” said Eva.
“Martha is neither common nor old,” began Lucy and stopped. From experience she knew it was useless to argue with her sister-in-law. Martha spoke Cockney and her hair had gone grey as a comparatively young woman; therefore Martha was both common and old. Eva never looked beyond the surface; her criticisms were as rootless as her enthusiasms.
“I am quite satisfied with Martha,” said Lucy quietly. “Anna will be well fed and well cared for.”
“But will she be well cared for?” asked Eva, leaning forward with a gleam in her pale eyes behind their spectacles. “Who knows what peculiar society she may get into without someone to guide her? I don’t trust those dancing people farther than I can see them.”
“Have you ever known any?” asked Lucy.
“It’s a well-known fact that their standards are quite different from ours,” said Eva.
“Different, but that doesn’t necessarily mean worse,” said Lucy, “and I trust Anna.”
“All the same, you really ought to get rid of that ghastly house and go and live with her,” said Eva, biting into a cream bun as if it were a personal enemy.
“I don’t think Cyril would care for that,” said Lucy.
“Cyril would be the first to realize where your duty lay,” replied Eva.
“I doubt it, if it were to clash with his own interests,” said Lucy.
“I don’t think that’s fair to Cyril,” said Eva, “but, then, you never have understood him, just as you never really understood poor Edwin.”
It was useless to argue, thought Lucy again. Nephews and brothers were quite different people from sons and husbands, and Eva, having had neither son nor husband, could never appreciate the difference that lay in the relationships.
“Cyril never suggested that I should go to London,” she said. “He wants to have nothing to do with Miss Dale, the dancer, and if I went to live with her, that might be difficult.”
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” said Eva. She pushed away her plate and glanced at the watch she wore on a massive gold chain about her wrist as if she had manacled time itself. “Five o’clock,” she said, “I shall just have time to see you on the five-fifteen bus to Whitecliff before I catch mine to Whitchester.”
“But I’m not catching the five-fifteen,” said Lucy, though she had intended to go by that very bus, “I—I have to see a friend.”
“A friend—what friend?” asked Eva. “I didn’t know that you knew anyone in Whitmouth.”
“It’s a sort of relation,” said Lucy. Weren’t pawnbrokers popularly called uncles, so this was no lie!
“I thought you had no relatives,” said Eva, “I always understood that your father and mother were both only children.”
“They were,” replied Lucy. “It’s a very distant connection.”
“I hope, Lucy,” said Eva, “that you are not getting mixed up with anyone undesirable—you always did have a very poor sense of social distinctions—you remember that girl you picked up in Whitchester and we found out her father was a retired undertaker.”
“I liked that girl,” said Lucy, “she had a lovely face and a grand sense of humour.”
“And was quite unsuitable,” said Eva. “If I hadn’t to get back for a special meeting of our Hobby Club, I should stay and meet this friend or relation.”
“I’m sure he’d be pleased to meet you,” said Lucy recklessly.
“He!” repeated Eva, her worst suspicions more than confirmed. “Does Cyril know this man?”
“Not yet, but he may have to,” said Lucy with a twinkle.
“Have to!” echoed Eva. “Lucy, you’re not—you’re not thinking of marrying again!”
“No,” said Lucy, “you needn’t worry, Eva, I’ve grown up past romance.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Eva swiftly, “after all you’re younger than I am—I don’t consider myself old, not in these days—and I suppose some people might call you attractive in a clinging sort of way—men are such fools.”
She rose abruptly and, beckoning to the waitress to bring them the bill, stumped away with it to the pay-desk by the door, as Lucy surreptitiously slipped a tip into the girl’s hand.
It was drizzling when they left the shop, and, scolding Lucy for having no umbrella, Eva put up her own. Holding it over Lucy so that the drips ran coldly down her neck, she seized her arm and led her away in quite the wrong direction, until at a street-crossing Lucy managed to free herself and bid Eva good-bye, thanking her for the tea and promising that she would call and see her the next time she should be in Whitchester.
“Which will be never,” she said to herself as she hurried back to the pawnbroker’s before he should put up his shutters.
It was so near closing by the time she reached the shop that it was empty of any one but the proprietor, which was at least something to thank Eva for, thought Lucy, as she pulled out the leather case containing the brooch from her bag and laid it on the green baize cloth on the high counter.
The pawnbroker, a tall thin man, with small dark eyes that looked anywhere but at the person he was addressing, reached out a bony hand to pick up the brooch, and, screwing a magnifying glass into his right eye, examined the diamonds intently.
“I presume you want this reset,” he said in a hollow voice.
Lucy shook her head. “No,” she whispered, “I—I want to sell it.”
The man looked at the dove, after this remark, with quite a different expression, almost as if it had turned into a glass imitation of a sparrow. He laid it down on the counter.
“It’s very old-fashioned,” he said disparagingly.
“But I have been told the stones are good ones,” said Lucy, “and the setting is twenty-two carat.”
“Fifteen,” said the man abruptly.
“Twenty-two—it’s marked,” replied Lucy.
“No, no, I’ll give you fifteen pounds for the brooch,” said the man, looking away over Lucy’s head, as if she were addressing him from the ceiling.
“That doesn’t seem very much,” said Lucy doubtfully.
He shrugged his shoulders, and, turning away, began to tot up figures in a ledger.
“There’s a brooch,” said Lucy, pointing to the glass showcase beneath the counter, “with much smaller diamonds, and that has fifty pounds marked on it.”
“Modern setting—platinum,” said the man, continuing to add.
“Couldn’t you give me——”
“Sixty pounds and not a penny less, dammit,” roared the captain’s voice.
The pawnbroker looked up from his book and stared with goggling eyes at Lucy, who stared back at him in equal horror, scarlet-cheeked, her mouth open to frame the words she had been about to utter.
“Wh—what was that you said?” asked the man, lowering his gaze.
“Sixty pounds, you herring-gutted sneak thief,” said the captain. “The emeralds may be chips but the diamonds are good and you know it—worth sixty alone——”
“Take it away—take it away,” said the pawnbroker, gasping, “looking such a lady, too.”
“You hand over sixty pounds,” snapped the captain. Lucy continued to stand there, speechless. “Damn your eyes, don’t you know good diamonds when you see them, and honestly come by too, which is more than you can say about some of the stuff you receive here, I’ll lay my Bible oath.”
“Shut your trap,” snarled the pawnbroker, his face going the colour of parchment. “Who are you anyway!”
“Never you mind,” said the captain, “but
I know what I know. Is that brooch worth sixty or isn’t it?”
“Blackmail,” mumbled the pawnbroker, “that’s what.”
“Guilty conscience,” said the captain. “I’m not blackmailing anyone, I’m offering you some damn fine diamonds at a damn low price, take it or leave it.”
With shaking hands the pawnbroker opened his till and, sorting out a bundle of notes, pushed them across the counter to Lucy, who picked them up with equally trembling fingers and put them in her bag.
“Thank you,” she said gently, and hurried away, leaving the pawnbroker staring at the symbol of peace on the green baize cloth in front of him.
“I don’t care,” said Lucy to the captain in the privacy of her own home, “you had no right to do it. It put me in a terrible position—and I’ll never dare set foot in Whitmouth again.”
“As you never go there anyway, you don’t lose much by that,” said the captain. “Why didn’t you get the typewriter?”
“Why didn’t I get the typewriter?” said Lucy. “For one thing the shops were shut, and for another I shall never dare go shopping in person again anywhere.”
“Well, I’m sorry, me dear,” said the captain, “but I couldn’t let that rogue get away with cheating you out of forty-five pounds.”
“If he was such a rogue, how could he hear you?” asked Lucy. “That’s what puzzles me.”
“Rogues aren’t necessarily insensitive,” replied the captain, “and all sensitive people can hear me—that’s why Miles heard me. It’s only those with one-track minds, who never can see or feel anyone’s point of view but their own, who are deaf spiritually.”
“But I thought you said Miles was entirely selfish,” said Lucy.
“Selfish, but not insensitive,” said the captain. “He could feel and see anyone’s point of view and turn it to his own advantage. And good and bad doesn’t always mean spiritual and unspiritual, that’s another man-made distinction; some of the worst men by earthly standards have the finest thoughts and feelings, but they get in a fog, perhaps at the beginning of their lives, and never can learn to navigate in a straight line. And I’ll tell you something else; it’s the saints and the sinners that are much the closest to first things, not the half-and-halfers with their negative sins of spite, malice, and uncharitableness.”
“Which are you,” asked Lucy, “a saint or a sinner?”
“Well, I’m no saint,” said the captain. “I didn’t take a very high grade on the other side, but at least I was honest with myself and I wasn’t thrown out altogether.”
“You mean there is a hell?” said Lucy.
“Some people might call it so,” said the captain. “There’s a dimension that some spirits have to wait in till they realize and admit the truth about themselves. It’s no damn good trying to teach anyone who won’t admit he has anything to learn.”
“Will I go into that dimension?” asked Lucy, wide-eyed.
“Not if you’re completely honest with yourself,” said the captain. “But don’t you worry your head about where you’ll end at the end of the voyage, that’s a sure way to run on the rocks under your nose. And now hop into bed like a good girl, and to-morrow we’ll start on my life in long-hand, till you can order a typewriter from London.”
III
There were many times in the next few weeks that Lucy folded her hands in her lap and refused to go on with Blood and Swash.
First there was the difficulty she found in typing. She had never used a typewriter before. In a vague way she had thought that they ran of themselves like a sewing machine, but she found it to be far otherwise. This innocent looking little machine seemed to have a perverse personality of its own, that persisted in showering the paper with uncalled-for exclamation marks, with brackets, per-cent signs, fractions and dashes; nor could it spell. Lucy had always prided herself on her spelling, but on this typewriter the simplest words came out looking like a foreign language, and some letters seemed to have stronger characters than others, insisting on coming first on all occasions; but gradually she became more proficient, and though she never came to the use of all her fingers on the keyboard, she began to do well enough with four of them and a thumb.
But the second obstacle was less easy for her to get over.
“Such words,” she said one evening, “they would never get printed, and I can’t put down things like that. I don’t believe they ever happened. I will not write this Marseille bit, we’ll leave that out.”
“We will not,” said the captain.
“I will,” said Lucy.
“Then I won’t go on,” said the captain, “this is my story and I’ll damn well have it my way. Such things should be shown up.”
“I see no need for it,” said Lucy.
“Well, I do,” said the captain. “My book is going to be a true record, and it will show the black side as well as the white.”
“I don’t believe such things happen,” repeated Lucy obstinately.
“You said that before,” said the captain, “it’s a sign of old age creeping on when you make the same remark twice in as many minutes, and you don’t want to have a pauper’s funeral, so you’d best get on with my book. And these things do happen and far worse, and they’ll happen again to other young fellows in foreign ports unless they are warned.”
“If you had read something in a book, would that have stopped your going to this—this——”
“Brothel,” said the captain, “don’t mince words, Lucia. If there’s a good old English word, use it.”
“Would you have been stopped going there, merely because you read about such things in a book?” persisted Lucy.
“I might,” answered the captain. “At least I’d have been on my guard. I wouldn’t have thought I was being asked home to tea by a nice French girl.”
“Was that what you really thought?” asked Lucy.
“Yes,” replied the captain, “it was my first voyage and I was only sixteen, and I had spent all my life in a country village, brought up by a maiden aunt and educated by an ancient vicar, and what they didn’t know about life would fill an encyclopaedia. Now for heaven’s sake get on with it, Lucia, and stop havering—where was I? Marseille is different to any——”
“Different from,” said Lucy.
“To or from, what in heaven’s name does it matter?” shouted the captain. “This isn’t a literary epic, it’s the unvarnished story of a sailor’s life.”
“It’s certainly unvarnished,” agreed Lucy.
“Well, smear on your own varnish,” retorted the captain. “Change the grammar all you damn well want to as long as you leave the guts under it.”
“Perhaps it would be better,” said Lucy, “if I took it all down in long-hand first and then typed it. I can write very fast.”
“I don’t care how you do it,” said the captain, “but you’ll have to read over to me what you type, I don’t trust you an inch. And if there’s one more crack out of you, I’m through——Marseille is different to any other port in Europe.…”
Lucy could hear his voice moving up and down the room, as if he were walking a quarter-deck. She tried to picture him as a young man and as a small boy. In the first chapter of his book he had described his childhood. His father had been a ship’s mate and had been lost at sea when the captain had been six years old, and his mother had died a year later, and he had been sent to live with an aunt in the country. He must have been like a whirlwind coming into the calm of her life, with his love of danger and all persecuted things. He had climbed all the tallest trees and the steeple of the church, and had filled her house with mongrel puppies and half-drowned kittens; yet she must have grown fond of him, because when she died she left him all her money to buy his own ship.
The captain went on talking as her thoughts wandered.
“All these nice people,” he said explosively, “sitting at home on their beam-ends, revelling in all the luxuries the sailors bring them, despising the poor devils if they so much as take a dr
op of rum, and even sneering at the people who do try and do them any good. Are you very tired?” he suddenly broke off.
“No,” said Lucy, “I’m not tired, thank you.”
“Well, what are you looking so pensive about?” he asked.
“I was just thinking about you when you were small,” she answered, “and wondering what you were like.”
“My God! Isn’t that just like a woman!” he said. “I suppose you haven’t heard a word of what I was saying.”
“Oh, yes, I heard you,” said Lucy, “and I expect you are quite right.”
There was silence for a few moments, and then he said gruffly, “And what do you think I was like?”
“I think,” said Lucy softly, “that you must have been a bad little boy, and that your aunt must have felt very lonely with her clean carpets.”
By bullying and persuasion and the very real need for the money the book might bring, Captain Gregg hurried her along night after night, keeping her up till all hours, tapping away at the typewriter.
Fortunately Cyril, who came home for a month’s convalescence, was a heavy sleeper; but one night he did wake, and, going downstairs to get himself a hot drink, heard her typing in her bedroom and came in.
“My dear mother,” he said, peering at her short-sightedly for he had forgotten to put on his glasses, “what are you doing? It looks almost as if you were writing a book!”
“Yes,” said Lucy, hastily bundling the papers together. They were at chapter eight, dealing with native dances in Bali-Bali at the time.
“My dear little mother,” said Cyril affectionately, coming close to put an arm around her shoulders as she quickly pulled the cover over the typewriter and the page it contained, “you are writing a book! Whatever for?”
“To try and make a little money,” said Lucy, clasping the manuscript to her in an untidy heap.
“I had no idea you could write,” Cyril said.
“Neither had I—go back to bed, dear, or you will catch cold.”
“It’s a very warm night,” said Cyril, “and I’m not sleepy.” Drawing his dressing-gown about his knees, he seated himself in the armchair.