The Dead of Night

by Oliver Onions

‘Why “well, well”?’ Marsden demanded . . . ‘But, of course, you never did and never will know what I meant.’

  ‘By Romance? . . . No, I can’t say that I did; but as I conceived it, it was something that began in appetite and ended in diabetes.’

  ‘Not philosophic, eh?’ Marsden enquired, picking up a chicken bone.

  ‘Highly unphilosophic,’ said Romarin, shaking his head.

  ‘Hm!’ grunted Marsden, stripping the bone . . . ‘Well, I grant it pays in a different way.’

  ‘It does pay, then?’ Romarin asked.

  ‘Oh yes, it pays.’

  The restaurant had filled up. It was one frequented by young artists, musicians, journalists and the clingers to the rather frayed fringes of the Arts. From time to time heads were turned to look at Romarin’s portly and handsome figure, which the Press, the Regent Street photographic establishments, and the Academy Supplements had made well known. The plump young Frenchwoman within the glazed cash office near the door, at whom Marsden had several times glanced in a way at which Romarin had frowned, was aware of the honour done the restaurant; and several times the blond-bearded proprietor had advanced and enquired with concern whether the dinner and the service was to the liking of m’sieu.

  And the eyes that were turned to Romarin plainly wondered who the scallawag dining with him might be.

  Since Romarin had chosen that their conversation should be of the old days, and without picking and choosing, Marsden was quite willing that it should be so. Again he was casting the bullets of bread into his mouth, and again Romarin was conscious of irrit­ation. Marsden, too, noticed it; but in awaiting the rôti he still continued to roll and bolt the pellets, washing them down with gulps of whiskey and soda.

  ‘Oh yes, it paid,’ he resumed. ‘Not in that way, of course – ’ he indicated the head, quickly turned away again, of an aureoled young­ster with a large bunch of black satin tie, ‘ – not in admiration of that sort, but in other ways –’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Certainly, if you want it. But you’re my host. Won’t you let me hear your side of it all first?’

  ‘But I thought you said you knew that – had followed my career?’

  ‘So I have. It’s not your list of honours and degrees; let me see, what are you? R.A., D.C.L., Doctor of Literature, whatever that means, and Professor of this, that, and the other, and not at the end of it yet. I know all that. I don’t say you haven’t earned it; I admire your painting; but it’s not that. I want to know what it feels like to be up there where you are.’

  It was a childish question, and Romarin felt foolish in trying to answer it. Such things were the things the adoring aureoled youngster a table or two away would have liked to ask. Romarin recognised in Marsden the old craving for sensation; it was part of the theoretical creed Marsden had made for himself, of doing things, not for their own sakes, but in order that he might have done them. Of course, it had appeared to a fellow like that, that Romarin him-self had always had a calculated end in view; he had not; Marsden merely measured Romarin’s peck out of his own bushel. It had been Mars­den who, in self-consciously seeking his own life, had lost it, and Romarin was more than a little inclined to suspect that the vehemence with which he protested that he had not lost it was precisely the measure of the loss.

  But he essayed it – essayed to give Marsden a résumé of his career. He told him of the stroke of sheer luck that had been the foundation of it all, the falling ill of another painter who had turned over certain commissions to him. He told him of his poor but happy marriage, and of the windfall, not large, but timely, that had come to his wife. He told him of fortunate acquaintanceships happily cultivated, of his first important commission, of the fresco that had procured for him his Associateship, of his sale to the Chantrey, and of his quietly remunerative Visitorships and his work on Boards and Committees.

  And as he talked, Marsden drew his empty glass to him, moistened his finger with a little spilt liquid, and began to run the finger round the rim of the glass. They had done that formerly, a whole roomful of them, producing, when each had found the note of his instrument, a high, thin, intolerable singing. To this singing Romarin strove to tell his tale.

  But that thin and bat-like note silenced him. He ended lamely, with some empty generalisation on success.

  ‘Ah, but success in what?’ Marsden demanded, interrupting his playing on the glass for a moment.

  ‘In your aim, whatever it may be.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Marsden, resuming his performance.

  Romarin had sought in his recital to minimise differences in circum­stances; but Marsden seemed bent on aggravating them. He had the miserable advantage of the man who has nothing to lose. And bit by bit, Romarin had begun to realise that he was going considerably more than halfway to meet this old enemy of his, and that amity seemed as far on as ever. In his heart he began to feel the foreknowledge that their meeting could have no conclusion. He hated the man, the look of his face and the sound of his voice, as much as ever.

  The proprietor approached with profoundest apology in his atti­tude. M’sieu would pardon him, but the noise of the glass . . . it was annoying . . . another m’sieu had made complaint . . .

  ‘Eh? . . . ’ cried Marsden. ‘Oh, that! Certainly! It can be put to a much better purpose.’

  He refilled the glass.

  The liquor had begun to tell on him. A quarter of the quantity would have made a clean-living man incapably drunk, but it had only made Marsden’s eyes bright. He gave a sarcastic laugh.

  ‘And is that all?’ he asked.

  Romarin replied shortly that that was all.

  ‘You’ve missed out the R.A., and the D.C.L.’

  ‘Then let me add that I’m a Doctor of Civil Law and a full Member of the Royal Academy,’ said Romarin, almost at the end of his patience. ‘And now, since you don’t think much of it, may I hear your own account?’

  ‘Oh, by all means. I don’t know, however, that – ’ he broke off to throw a glance at a woman who had just entered the restaurant – a divesting glance that caused Romarin to redden to his crown and drop his eyes. ‘I was going to say that you may think as little of my history as I do of yours. Supple woman that; when the rather scraggy blonde does take it into her head to be a devil she’s the worst kind there is . . . ’

  Without apology Romarin looked at his watch.

  ‘All right,’ said Marsden, smiling, ‘for what I’ve got out of life, then. But I warn you, it’s entirely discreditable.’

  Romarin did not doubt it.

  ‘But it’s mine, and I boast of it. I’ve done – barring receiving honours and degrees – everything – everything! If there’s anything I haven’t done, tell me and lend me a sovereign, and I’ll go and do it.’

  ‘You haven’t told the story.’

  ‘That’s so. Here goes then . . . Well, you know, unless you’ve forgotten, how I began . . . ’

  Fruit and nutshells and nutcrackers lay on the table between them, and at the end of it, shielded from draughts by the menu cards, the coffee apparatus simmered over its elusive blue flame. Romarin was taking the rind from a pear with a table-knife, and Marsden had declined port in favour of a small golden liqueur of brandy. Every seat in the restaurant was now occupied, and the proprietor himself had brought his finest cigarettes and cigars. The waiter poured out the coffee, and departed with the apparatus in one hand and his napkin in the other.

  Marsden was already well into his tale . . .

  The frightful unction with which he told it appalled Romarin. It was as he had said – there was nothing he had not done and did not exult in with a sickening exultation. It had, indeed, ended in diabetes. In the pitiful hunting down of sensation to the last inch he had been fiendishly ingenious and utterly unimaginative. His unholy curiosity had spared nothing, his
unnatural appetite had known no truth. It was grinning sin. The details of it simply cannot be told . . .

  And his vanity in it all was prodigious. Romarin was pale as he listened. What! in order that this malignant growth in Society’s breast should be able to say ‘I know’, had sanctities been profaned, sweet conventions assailed, purity blackened, soundness infected, and all that was bright and of the day been sunk in the quagmire that this creature of the night had called – yes, still called – by the gentle name of Romance? Yes, so it had been. Not only had men and women suffered dishonour, but manhood and womanhood and the clean institutions by which alone the creature was suffered to exist had been brought to shame. And what was he to look at when it was all done? . . .

  ‘Romance – Beauty – the Beauty of things as they are!’ he croaked.

  If faces in the restaurant were now turned to Romarin, it was the horror on Romarin’s own face that drew them. He drew out his handkerchief and mopped his brow.

  ‘But,’ he stammered presently, ‘you are speaking of generalities – horrible theories – things diabolically conceivable to be done –’

  ‘What?’ cried Marsden, checked for a moment in his horrible triumph. ‘No, by God! I’ve done ’em, done ’em! Don’t you under­stand? If you don’t, question me! . . . ’

  ‘No, no!’ cried Romarin.

  ‘But I say yes! You came for this, and you shall have it! I tried to stop you, but you wanted it, and by God you shall have it! You think your life’s been full and mine empty? Ha ha! . . . Romance! I had the conviction of it, and I’ve had the courage too! I haven’t told you a tenth of it! What would you like? Chamber-windows when Love was hot? The killing of a man who stood in my way? (I’ve fought a duel, and killed.) The squeezing of the juice out of life like that?’ He pointed to Romarin’s plate; Romarin had been eating grapes. ‘Did you find me saying I’d do a thing and then drawing back from it when we – ’ he made a quick gesture of both hands towards the middle of the restaurant floor.

  ‘When we fought – ?’

  ‘Yes, when we fought, here! . . . Oh no, oh no! I’ve lived, I tell you, every moment! Not a title, not a degree, but I’ve lived such a life as you never dreamed of – !’

  ‘Thank God –’

  But suddenly Marsden’s voice, which had risen, dropped again. He began to shake with interior chuckles. They were the old, old chuckles, and they filled Romarin with a hatred hardly to be borne. The sound of the animal’s voice had begun it, and his every word, look, movement, gesture, since they had entered the restaurant, had added to it. And he was now chuckling, chuckling, shaking with chuckles, as if some monstrous tit-bit still remained to be told. Already Romarin had tossed aside his napkin, beckoned to the waiter, and said, ‘M’sieu dines with me . . . ’

  ‘Ho ho ho ho!’ came the drunken sounds. ‘It’s a long time since m’sieu dined here with his old friend Romarin! Do you remember the last time? Do you remember it? Pif, pan! Two smacks across the table, Romarin – oh, you got it in very well! – and then, brrrrr! quick! Back with the tables – all the fellows round – Farquharson for me and Smith for you, and then to it, Romarin! . . . And you really don’t remember what it was all about? . . . ’

  Romarin had remembered. His face was not the face of the philo­sophic master of Life now.

  ‘You said she shouldn’t – little Pattie Hines you know – you said she shouldn’t –’

  Romarin sprang half from his chair, and brought his fist down on the table.

  ‘And by Heaven, she didn’t! At least that’s one thing you haven’t done!’

  Marsden too had risen unsteadily.

  ‘Oho, oho? You think that?’

  A wild thought flashed across Romarin’s brain.

  ‘You mean – ?’

  ‘I mean? . . . Oho, oho! Yes, I mean! She did, Romarin . . . ’

  The mirrors, mistily seen through the smoke of half a hundred cigars and cigarettes, the Loves and Shepherdesses of the garish walls, the diners starting up in their places, all suddenly seemed to swing round in a great half-circle before Romarin’s eyes. The next moment, feeling as if he stood on something on which he found it difficult to keep his balance, he had caught up the table-knife with which he had peeled the pear and had struck at the side of Marsden’s neck. The rounded blade snapped, but he struck again with the broken edge, and left the knife where it entered. The table appeared uptilted almost vertical; over it Marsden’s head disappeared; it was followed by a shower of glass, cigars, artificial flowers and the table­cloth at which he clutched; and the dirty American cloth of the table top was left bare.

  * * *

  But the edge behind which Marsden’s face had disappeared remained vertical. A group of scene-shifters were moving a flat of scenery from a theatre into a tumbril-like cart . . .

  And Romarin knew that, past, present, and future, he had seen it all in an instant, and that Marsden stood behind that painted wing.

  And he knew, too, that he had only to wait until that flat passed and to take Marsden’s arm and enter the restaurant, and it would be so. A drowning man is said to see all in one unmeasurable instant of time; a year-long dream is but, they say, an instantaneous arrangement in the moment of waking of the molecules we associate with ideas; and the past of history and the future of prophecy are folded up in the mystic moment we call the present . . .

  It would come true . . .

  For one moment Romarin stood; the next, he had turned and run for his life.

  At the corner of the street he collided with a loafer, and only the wall saved them from going down. Feverishly Romarin plunged his hand into his pocket and brought out a handful of silver. He crammed it into the loafer’s hand.

  ‘Here – quick – take it!’ he gasped. ‘There’s a man there, by that restaurant door – he’s waiting for Mr Romarin – tell him – tell him – tell him Mr Romarin’s had an accident –’

  And he dashed away, leaving the man looking at the silver in his palm.

  Io

  As the young man put his hand to the uppermost of the four brass bell-knobs to the right of the fanlighted door he paused, withdrew the hand again, and then pulled at the lowest knob. The sawing of bell-wire answered him, and he waited for a moment, uncertain whether the bell had rung, before pulling again. Then there came from the basement a single cracked stroke; the head of a maid appeared in the whitewashed area below; and the head was with­drawn as apparently the maid recognised him. Steps were heard along the hall; the door was opened; and the maid stood aside to let him enter, the apron with which she had slipped the latch still crumpled in her greasy hand.

  ‘Sorry, Daisy,’ the young man apologised, ‘but I didn’t want to bring her down all those stairs. How is she? Has she been out today?’

  The maid replied that the person spoken of had been out; and the young man walked along the wide carpeted passage.

  It was cumbered like an antique-shop with alabaster busts on pedestals, dusty palms in faience vases, and trophies of spears and shields and assegais. At the foot of the stairs was a rustling portière of strung beads, and beyond it the carpet was continued up the broad, easy flight, secured at each step by a brass rod. Where the stairs made a turn, the fading light of the December afternoon, made still dimmer by a window of decalcomanied glass, shone on a cloudy green aquarium with sallow goldfish, a number of cacti on a shabby console table, and a large and dirty white sheepskin rug. Passing along a short landing, the young man began the ascent of the second flight. This also was carpeted, but with a carpet that had done duty in some dining- or bed-room before being cut up into strips of the width of the narrow space between the wall and the handrail. Then, as he still mounted, the young man’s feet sounded loud on oilcloth; and when he finally paused and knocked at a door it was on a small landing of naked boards beneath the cold gleam of the skylight above the well of th
e stairs.

  ‘Come in,’ a girl’s voice called.

  The room he entered had a low sagging ceiling on which shone a low glow of firelight, making colder still the patch of eastern sky beyond the roofs and the cowls and hoods of chimneys framed by the square of the single window. The glow on the ceiling was reflected dully in the old dark mirror over the mantelpiece. An open door in the farther corner, hampered with skirts and blouses, allowed a glimpse of the girl’s bedroom.

  The young man set the paper bag he carried down on the littered round table and advanced to the girl who sat in an old wicker chair before the fire. The girl did not turn her head as he kissed her cheek, and he looked down at something that had muffled the sound of his steps as he had approached her.

  ‘Hallo, that’s new, isn’t it, Bessie? Where did that come from?’ he asked cheerfully.

  The middle of the floor was covered with a common jute matting, but on the hearth was a magnificent leopard-skin rug.

  ‘Mrs Hepburn sent it up. There was a draught from under the door. It’s much warmer for my feet.’

  ‘Very kind of Mrs Hepburn. Well, how are you feeling today, old girl?’

  ‘Better, thanks, Ed.’

  ‘That’s the style. You’ll be yourself again soon. Daisy says you’ve been out today?’

  ‘Yes, I went for a walk. But not far; I went to the Museum and then sat down. You’re early, aren’t you?’

  He turned away to get a chair, from which he had to move a mass of tissue-paper patterns and buckram linings. He brought it to the rug.

  ‘Yes. I stopped last night late to cash up for Vedder, so he’s staying tonight. Turn and turn about. Well, tell us all about it, Bess.’

  Their faces were red in the firelight. Hers had the prettiness that the first glance almost exhausts, the prettiness, amazing in its quan­tity, that one sees for a moment under the light of the street lamps when shops and offices close for the day. She was short-nosed, pulpy-mouthed and faunish-eyed, and only the rather remarkable smallness of the head on the splendid thick throat saved her from ordinariness. He, too, might have been seen in his thousands at the close of any day, hurrying home to Catford or Walham Green or Tufnell Park to tea and an evening with a girl or in a billiard-room, or else dining cheaply ‘up West’ preparatory to smoking cigarettes from yellow packets in the upper circle of a music-hall. Four inches of white up-and-down collar encased his neck; and as he lifted his trousers at the knee to clear his purple socks, the pair of paper covers showed, that had protected his cuffs during the day at the office. He removed them, crumpled them up and threw them on the fire; and the momentary addition to the light of the upper chamber showed how curd-white was that superb neck of hers and how moody and tired her eyes.