Chapter II (1)

When he reached the little drawing-room of their flat his wife was making tea. She was rather short, with a good figure, and brown eyes in a flattish face, powdered and by no means unattractive. She had Slav blood in her--Polish; and Granter never now confided to her the finer shades of his thoughts and conduct because she had long made him feel himself her superior in moral sensibility. He had no wish to feel superior--it was often very awkward; but he could not help it. In view of this attempt at blackmail, more than awkward. It was extraordinarily unpleasant to fall from a pedestal on which he did not wish to be.

He sat down, very large, in a lacquered chair with black cushions, spoke of the leaves turning, saw her look at him and smile, and felt that she knew he was disturbed.

“Do you ever wonder,” he said, tinkling his teaspoon, “about the lives that other people live?”

“What sort of people, Charles?”

“Oh--not our sort; match-sellers, don’t you know, flower-sellers, people down and out?”

“No, I don’t think I do.”

If only he could tell her of this monstrous incident without slipping from his pedestal!

“It interests me enormously; there are such queer depths to reach, don’t you know.”

Her smile seemed to answer: ‘You don’t reach the depths in me.’ And it was true. She was very Slav, with the warm gleam in her eyes and the opaque powdered skin of her comely face. An enigma--flatly an enigma! There were deep waters below the pedestal, like--like Philæ, with columns still standing in the middle of the Nile Dam. Absurd thought!

“I’ve often wondered,” he said, “how I should feel if I were down and out.”

“You’re too large, Charles, and too dignified, my dear; you’d be on the Civil List before you could turn round.”

Granter rose from the lacquered chair, jingling his coins. The most vivid pictures at that moment were, like a film, unrolled before his mind--of the grey sunlit river and that accosting blackguard with his twisted murky face and lips uttering hoarse sounds; of the yellow baby, and the girl’s gipsy-dark glance from behind it; of a police court, and himself standing there and letting the whole cartload of the law fall on them. He said suddenly:

“I was blackmailed this afternoon on the Embankment.”

She did not answer; and, turning with irritation, he saw that her fingers were in her ears.

“I do wish you wouldn’t jingle your money so!” she said.

Confound it! She had not heard him.

“I’ve had an adventure,” he began again. “You know the flower-girl who stands at that corner in Tite Street?”

“Yes; a gipsy baggage.”

“H’m! Well, I bought a flower from her one day, and she told me such a pathetic story that I went to her den to see if it was true. It seemed to be, so I gave her some money, don’t you know. Then I thought I’d better see how she was spending it, so I went to see her again, don’t you know.”

A faint “Oh! Charles!” caused him to hurry on.

“And--what do you think--a blackguard followed me to-day and tried to blackmail me for ten pounds on the Embankment.”

A sound brought his face round to attention. His wife was lying back on the cushions of her chair in paroxysms of soft laughter.

It was clear to Granter, then, that what he had really been afraid of was just this. His wife would laugh at him--laugh at him slipping from the pedestal! Yes! It was that he had dreaded--not any disbelief in his fidelity. Somehow he felt too large to be laughed at. He _was_ too large! Nature had set a size beyond which husbands----!

“I don’t see what there is to laugh at,” he said frigidly. “There’s no more odious crime than blackmail.”

His wife was silent; tears were trickling down her cheeks.

“Did you give it him?” she said in a strangled voice.

“Of course not.”

“What was he threatening?”

“To tell you.”

“But what?”

“His beastly interpretation of my harmless visits.”

The tears had made runlets in her powder, and he added viciously: “He doesn’t know you, of course.”

His wife dabbed her eyes, and a scent of geranium arose.

“It seems to me,” said Granter, “that you’d be even more amused if there _were_ something in it!”

“Oh, no, Charles, but--perhaps there is.”

Granter looked at her fixedly.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, there is not.”

He saw her cover her lips with that rag of handkerchief, and abruptly left the room.

He went into his study and sat down before the fire. So it was funny to be a faithful husband? And suddenly he thought: ‘If my wife can treat this as a joke, what--what about herself?’ A nasty thought! An unconscionable thought! Really, it was as though that blackmailing scoundrel had dirtied human nature till it seemed to function only from low motives. A church clock chimed. Six already! The ruffian would be back there on the Embankment waiting for his ten pounds. Granter rose. His duty was to go out and hand him over to the police.

‘No!’ he thought viciously, ‘let him come here! I’d very much like him to come here. I’d teach him!’

But a sort of shame beset him. Like most very big men, he was quite unaccustomed to violence--had never struck a violent blow in his life, not even in his school-days--had never had occasion to. He went across to the window. From there he could just see the Embankment parapet through the trees in the failing light, and presently--sure enough--he made out the fellow’s figure slinking up and down like a hungry dog. He stood watching, jingling his money--nervous, sarcastic, angry, very interested. What would the rascal do now? Would he beard this great block of flats? And was the girl down there too--the girl, with her yellow baby? He saw the slinking figure cross from the far side and vanish under the loom of the mansions. In that interesting moment Granter burst through the bottom of one of his trousers’ pockets; several coins jingled on to the floor and rolled away. He was still looking for the last when he heard the door-bell ring--he had never really believed the ruffian would come up! Straightening himself abruptly, he went out into the hall. Service was performed by the mansion’s staff, so there was no one in the flat but himself and his wife. The bell rang again; and she, too, appeared.

“This is my Embankment friend, no doubt, who amuses you so much. I should like you to see him,” he said grimly. He noted a quizzical apology on her face and opened the hall door.

Yes! there stood the man! By electric light, in upholstered surroundings, more ‘down and out’ than ever. A bad lot, but a miserable poor wretch, with his broken boots, his thin, twisted, twitching face, his pinched shabby figure--only his hungry eyes looked dangerous.

“Come in,” said Granter. “You want to see my wife, I think.”

The man recoiled.

“I don’t want to see ’er,” he muttered, “unless you force me to. Give us _five_ pound, guv’nor, and I won’t worry you again. I don’t want to cause trouble between man and wife.”

“Come in,” repeated Granter; “she’s expecting you.”

The man stood, silently passing a pale tongue over a pale upper lip, as though conjuring some new resolution from his embarrassment.

“Now, see ’ere, mister,” he said suddenly, “you’ll regret it if I come in--you will, straight.”

“I shall regret it if you don’t. You’re a very interesting fellow, and an awful scoundrel.”

“Well, who made me one?” the man burst out; “you answer me that.”

“Are you coming in?”

“Yes, I am.”

He came, and Granter shut the door behind him. It was like inviting a snake or a mad dog into one’s parlour; but the memory of having been laughed at was so fresh within him that he rather welcomed the sensation.

“Now,” he said, “have the kindness!” and opened the drawing-room door.

The man slunk in, blinking in the stronger light.

Granter went towards his wife, who was standing before the fire.

“This gentleman has an important communication to make to you, it seems.”

The expression of her face struck him as peculiar--surely she was not frightened! And he experienced a kind of pleasure in seeing them both look so exquisitely uncomfortable.

“Well,” he said ironically, “perhaps you’d like me not to listen.” And, going back to the door, he stood leaning against it with his hands up to his ears. He saw the fellow give him a furtive look and go nearer to her; his lips moved rapidly, hers answered, and he thought: ‘What on earth am I covering my ears for?’ He took his hands away, and the man turned round.

“I’m goin’ now, mister; a little mistake--sorry to ’ave troubled you.”

His wife had turned to the fire again; and with a puzzled feeling Granter opened the door. As the fellow passed he took him by the arm, twisted him round into the study, and, locking the door, put the key into his pocket.

“Now then,” he said, “you precious scoundrel!”

The man shifted on his broken boots. “Don’t you hit me, guv’nor, I got a knife here.”

“I’m not going to hit you. I’m going to hand you over to the police.”

The man’s eyes roved, looking for a way of escape; then rested, as if fascinated, on the glowing hearth.

“What’s ten pounds?” he said suddenly; “you’d never ha’ missed it.”

Granter smiled.

“You don’t seem to realise, my friend, that blackmail is the most devilish crime a man can commit.” And he crossed over to the telephone.

The man’s eyes, dark, restless, violent, and yet hungry, began to shift up and down the building of a man before him.

“No,” he said suddenly, with a sort of pathos, “don’t do that, guv’nor!”

The look of his eyes, or the tone of his voice, affected Granter.

“But if I don’t,” he said slowly, “you’ll be blackmailing the next person you meet. You’re as dangerous as a viper.”

The man’s lips quivered; he covered them with his hand, and said from behind it:

“I’m a man like yourself. I’m down and out--that’s all. Look at me!”

Granter’s glance dwelt on the trembling hand. “Yes, but you fellows destroy all belief in human nature,” he said vehemently.

“See ’ere, guv’nor; you try livin’ like me--you try it! My Gawd! You try my life these last six months--cadgin’ and crawlin’ for a job!” He made a deep sound. “A man ’oo’s done ’is bit, too. Wot life is it? A stinkin’ life, not fit for a dawg, let alone a ’uman bein’. An’ when I see a great big chap like you, beggin’ your pardon, mister, well fed, with everything to ’is ’and--it was regular askin’ for it. It come over me, it did.”

“No, no,” said Granter grimly; “that won’t do. It couldn’t have been sudden. You calculated--you concocted this. Blackmail is sheer filthy cold-blooded blackguardism. You don’t care two straws whom you hurt, whose lives you wreck, what faiths you destroy.” And he put his hand on the receiver.

The man squirmed.

“Steady on, guv’nor! I’ve gotta find food. I’ve gotta find clothes. I can’t live on air. I can’t go naked.”

Granter stood motionless, while the man’s voice continued to travel to him across the cosy room.

“Give us a chawnce, guv’nor! Ah! give us a chawnce! You can’t understand my temptations. Don’t have the police to me. I won’t do this again--give you me word--so ’elp me! I’ve got it in the neck. Let me go, guv’nor!”

In Granter, motionless as the flats he lived in, a heavy struggle was in progress--not between duty and pity, but between revengeful anger and a sort of horror at using the strength of prosperity against so broken a wretch.

“Let me go, mister!” came the hoarse voice again. “Be a sport!”

Granter dropped the receiver and unlocked the door.

“All right; you can go.”

The man crossed swiftly.

“Christ!” he said; “good luck! And as to the lady--I take it back. I never see ’er. It’s all me eye.”

He was across the hall and gone before Granter could decide what to say; the scurrying shuffle of his footsteps down the stairs died away. ‘And as to the lady--I take it back. I never see ’er. It’s all me eye!’ Good God! The scoundrel, having failed with him, had been trying to blackmail his wife--his wife, who had laughed at his fidelity--his wife, who had looked--frightened! ‘All me eye!’ Her face started up before Granter--_scared_ under its powder, with a mask drawn over it. And he had let that scoundrel go!... But why--scared? Blackmail--of all poisonous human actions!... Why scared?... What now ...!

1921.

THE BROKEN BOOT

The actor, Gilbert Caister, who had been ‘out’ for six months, emerged from his East Coast seaside lodging about noon in the day, after the opening of ‘Shooting the Rapids,’ on tour, in which he was playing Dr. Dominick in the last act. A salary of four pounds a week would not, he was conscious, remake his fortunes, but a certain jauntiness had returned to the gait and manner of one employed again at last.

Fixing his monocle, he stopped before a fishmonger’s and, with a faint smile on his face, regarded a lobster. Ages since he had eaten a lobster! One could long for a lobster without paying, but the pleasure was not solid enough to detain him. He moved upstreet and stopped again, before a tailor’s window. Together with the actual tweeds, in which he could so easily fancy himself refitted, he could see a reflection of himself, in the faded brown suit wangled out of the production of ‘Marmaduke Mandeville’ the year before the war. The sunlight in this damned town was very strong, very hard on seams and buttonholes, on knees and elbows! Yet he received the ghost of æsthetic pleasure from the reflected elegance of a man long fed only twice a day, of an eyeglass well rimmed out from a soft brown eye, of a velour hat salved from the production of ‘Educating Simon’ in 1912; and, in front of the window he removed that hat, for under it was his new phenomenon, not yet quite evaluated, his _mêche blanche_. Was it an asset, or the beginning of the end? It reclined backwards on the right side, conspicuous in his dark hair, above that shadowy face always interesting to Gilbert Caister. They said it came from atrophy of the--er--something nerve, an effect of the war, or of under-nourished tissue. Rather distinguished, perhaps, but----!

He walked on, and became conscious that he had passed a face he knew. Turning, he saw it also turned on a short and dapper figure--a face rosy, bright, round, with an air of cherubic knowledge, as of a getter-up of amateur theatricals.

Bryce-Green, by George!

“Caister? It is! Haven’t seen you since you left the old camp. Remember what sport we had over ‘Gotta Grampus’? By Jove! I am glad to see you. Doing anything with yourself? Come and have lunch with me.”

Bryce-Green, the wealthy patron, the moving spirit of entertainment in that South Coast convalescent camp. And, drawling slightly, Caister answered:

“Shall be delighted.” But within him something did not drawl: ‘By God, you’re going to have a feed, my boy!’

And--elegantly threadbare, roundabout and dapper--the two walked side by side.

“Know this place? Let’s go in here! Phyllis, cocktails for my friend Mr. Caister and myself, and caviare on biscuits. Mr. Caister is playing here! you must go and see him.”

The girl who served the cocktails and the caviare looked up at Caister with interested blue eyes. Precious! He had been ‘out’ for six months!

“Nothing of a part,” he drawled; “took it to fill a gap.” And below his waistcoat the gap echoed: ‘Yes, and it’ll take some filling.’

“Bring your cocktail along, Caister; we’ll go into the little further room, there’ll be nobody there. What shall we have--a lobstah?”

And Caister murmured: “I love lobstahs.”

“Very fine and large here. And how are you, Caister? So awfully glad to see you--only real actor we had.”

“Thanks,” said Caister, “I’m all right.” And he thought: ‘He’s a damned amateur, but a nice little man.’

“Sit here. Waiter, bring us a good big lobstah and a salad; and then--er--a small fillet of beef with potatoes fried crisp, and a bottle of my special hock. Ah! and a rum omelette--plenty of rum and sugah. Twig?”

And Caister thought: ‘Thank God, I do.’

They had sat down opposite each other at one of two small tables in the little recessed room.

“Luck!” said Bryce-Green.

“Luck!” replied Caister; and the cocktail trickling down him echoed: ‘Luck!’

“And what do you think of the state of the drama?” Oh! ho! A question after his own heart. Balancing his monocle by a sweetish smile on the opposite side of his mouth, Caister drawled his answer: “Quite too bally awful!”

“H’m! Yes,” said Bryce-Green; “nobody with any genius, is there?”

And Caister thought: ‘Nobody with any money.’

“Have you been playing anything great? You were so awfully good in ‘Gotta Grampus’!”

“Nothing particular. I’ve been--er--rather slack.” And with their feel around his waist his trousers seemed to echo: ‘Slack!’

“Ah!” said Bryce-Green. “Here we are! Do you like claws?”

“Tha-a-nks. Anything!” To eat--until warned by the pressure of his waist against his trousers! Huh! What a feast! And what a flow of his own tongue suddenly released--on drama, music, art; mellow and critical, stimulated by the round eyes and interjections of his little provincial host.

“By Jove, Caister! You’ve got a _mêche blanche_. Never noticed. I’m awfully interested in _mêches blanches_. Don’t think me too frightfully rude--but did it come suddenly?”

“No, gradually.”

“And how do you account for it?”

‘Try starvation,’ trembled on Caister’s lips.

“I don’t.”

“I think it’s ripping. Have some more omelette? I often wish I’d gone on the regular stage myself. Must be a topping life, if one has talent, like you.”

Topping?

“Have a cigar. Waiter! Coffee and cigars. I shall come and see you to-night. Suppose you’ll be here a week?”

Topping! The laughter and applause--“Mr. Caister’s rendering left nothing to be desired; its ---- and its ---- are in the true spirit of ----!”

Silence recalled him from his rings of smoke. Bryce-Green was sitting, with cigar held out and mouth a little open, and bright eyes round as pebbles, fixed--fixed on some object near the floor, past the corner of the tablecloth. Had he burnt his mouth? The eyelids fluttered; he looked at Caister, licked his lips like a dog, nervously, and said:

“I say, old chap, don’t think me a beast, but are you at all--er--er--rocky? I mean--if I can be of any service, don’t hesitate! Old acquaintance, don’t you know, and all that----”

His eyes rolled out again towards the object, and Caister followed them. Out there above the carpet he saw it--his own boot. It dangled, because his knees were crossed, six inches off the ground--split--right across, twice, between lace and toecap. Quite! He knew it. A boot left him from the rôle of Bertie Carstairs, in ‘The Dupe,’ just before the war. Good boots. His only pair, except the boots of Dr. Dominick, which he was nursing. And from the boot he looked back at Bryce-Green, sleek and concerned. A drop, black when it left his heart, suffused his eye behind the monocle; his smile curled bitterly; he said:

“Not at all, thanks! Why?”

“Oh! n-n-nothing. It just occurred to me.” His eyes--but Caister had withdrawn the boot. Bryce-Green paid the bill and rose.

“Old chap, if you’ll excuse me; engagement at half-past two. So awf’ly glad to have seen you. Good-bye!”

“Good-bye!” said Caister. “And thanks!”

He was alone. And, chin on hand, he stared through his monocle into an empty coffee cup. Alone with his heart, his boot, his life to come.... ‘And what have you been in lately, Mr. Caister?’ ‘Nothing very much lately. Of course I’ve played almost everything.’ ‘Quite so. Perhaps you’ll leave your address; can’t say anything definite, I’m afraid.’ ‘I--I should--er--be willing to rehearse on approval; or--if I could read the part?’ ‘Thank you, afraid we haven’t got as far as that.’ ‘No? Quite! Well, I shall hear from you, perhaps.’ And Caister could see his own eyes looking at the manager. God! What a look.... A topping life! A dog’s life! Cadging--cadging--cadging for work! A life of draughty waiting, of concealed beggary, of terrible depressions, of want of food!

The waiter came skating round as if he desired to clear. Must go! Two young women had come in and were sitting at the other table between him and the door. He saw them look at him, and his sharpened senses caught the whisper:

“Sure--in the last act. Don’t you see his _mêche blanche_?”

“Oh! yes--of course! Isn’t it--wasn’t he----!”

Caister straightened his back; his smile crept out, he fixed his monocle. They had spotted his Dr. Dominick!

“If you’ve quite finished, sir, may I clear?”

“Certainly. I’m going.” He gathered himself and rose. The young women were gazing up. Elegant, with faint smile, he passed them close, managing--so that they could not see--his broken boot.

1922.

STROKE OF LIGHTNING

This was before the war, and conditions were such that the tragedies and comedies of private lives seemed still to have importance.

I had not seen my friend Frank Weymouth for some years before coming across him and his wife that Christmas at the big hotel in Heliopolis. He was always a sunny fellow with a spilt-wine look about him, which not even a house-mastership at a Public School had been able to overcome; his wife, whom I had only met twice before, surprised me a little. I remembered a quiet, rather dark little person with a doubting eye; but this was a very kitten of a woman, brimful of mischief and chaff, and always on the go--reaction, no doubt, from the enforced decorum of a house where she was foster-mother of forty boys, in an atmosphere of being under glass and the scrutiny of intensive propriety. In our Egyptian hotel, with its soft, clever Berberine servants, its huge hall, palm-garden, and cosmopolitan guests, its golf-course with little dark, scurrying Arab caddies and the desert at its doors, Jessie Weymouth frolicked and rolled her large dark eyes, scratched and caressed us with her little paws. Life had suddenly got into her, and left its tail outside for her to chase. She dragged us all along in her gay pursuit of it; Weymouth smilingly acquiesced in her outrageous ‘goings-on.’ He knew, I suppose, that she was devoted to him, and her bark no bite. His ‘term’ had been a hard one; he was in a mood of lying back, physically run down, mentally flattened out. To soak in idleness and the sun was all he seemed to care about.

I forget who first conceived the notion of our desert trip, but it was Jessie Weymouth who fostered it. The Weymouths were not rich, and a desert trip costs money. They, myself, and a certain Breconridge couple had agreed to combine, when the Breconridges were suddenly summoned home by their daughter’s illness. Jessie Weymouth danced with disappointment. “I shall die if we don’t go now,” she cried. “We simply must scare up somebody.”

We scared up the Radolins, an Austrian couple in our hotel whom we had been meeting casually after dinner. He was a Count, in a bank at Constantinople, and she, I think, the daughter of a Viennese painter. They used to interest me from being so very much the antithesis of the Weymouths. He was making the most of his holiday, dancing, playing golf, riding; while she seemed extraordinarily listless, pale, and, as it were, dragged along by her lively husband. I would notice her lounging alone in the gorgeous hall, gazing apparently at nothing. I could not make up my mind about her looks. Her figure was admirable, so were her eyes--ice-green with dark lashes. But that air of tired indifference seemed to spoil her face. I remember doubting whether it were not going to spoil our trip. But Jessie Weymouth could not be denied, and Radolin, we all admitted, was good company.

We started, then, from Mena House, like all desert excursionists, on New Year’s Day. We had only a fortnight before us, for the Weymouths were due back in England on the twentieth.

Our dragoman was a merry scoundrel by disposition and an Algerian Bedouin by race. Besides him we had twelve Arabs, a Greek cook, seven camels, four donkeys, and five tents. We took the usual route for the Fayoum. I remember our start so well. In front, Jessie Weymouth on a silver-grey donkey, and our scoundrel on his pet camel. Then Radolin, Weymouth, and I on the other three donkeys, and Hélène Radolin perched up, remote and swaying, on the other riding-camel. The pack-camels had gone on ahead. All day we dawdled along, following the river towards Samara, where we camped at a due distance from that evil-smelling village. I had the middle tent, Weymouths to my right, Radolins to my left. Everything was well done by our merry dragoman, and dinner, thanks to him, Jessie Weymouth, and Radolin, a lively feast. Still, these first three days, skirting cultivation, were disappointing. But on the fourth we were well out on the lonely sands, and the desert air had begun to go to our heads. That night we camped among bare hills under a wonderful starry sky, cold and clear as crystal. Our scoundrel surpassed himself at dinner; Jessie Weymouth and Radolin were madcaps; Weymouth his old sunny self. Only Hélène Radolin preserved her languor; not offensively, but as though she had lost the habit of gaiety. That night I made up my mind, however, that she really was a beautiful woman. The long days in the sun had given her colour, taken the tired look out of her face, and at least twice during the evening I caught Weymouth’s eyes fixed on her as if he, too, had made that discovery.

The pranks of Jessie Weymouth and Radolin reached their limit at dinner, and they finished by rushing out into the night to the top of a neighbouring hillock.

Sitting in my tent doorway, counting the stars, I was joined by our dragoman. The fellow had been in England and knew about Western freedom and the manners of our women.

“She certainly is a good one, Mrs. Weymut,” he said to me. “Mr. Weymut a very quiet man. I think he will be tired of her flirts, but he never say nothing--too b----y gentle. The Count he is a good one too, but the Countess--ah! she made of ice! We get some fresh fruit to-morrow at the Fayoum.”

He went on to his men, two hundred yards away among the camels.

It was wonderfully silent. The light from stars and a half-moon powdered the sands; no wind at all, yet deliciously cold--the desert in good mood; no influence quite so thrilling to pulses, yet so cooling to fevers; no sound, no movement in all the night.

“Isn’t it heavenly? Good-night.”

Hélène Radolin was passing me in her fur. She went into her tent. I sat on, smoking. And presently, outside the dining-tent, I saw Weymouth, his head thrown back, drawing in deep breaths. By the light of the lantern over the tent door he had a look as if inspired by a curious happy wonder. Then he, too, went to his tent. Ten minutes later the madcaps returned, Mrs. Weymouth in front, very quiet; her face, indeed, wore a rather mortified expression, as if she had fallen a little in her own estimation. They went into their tents, and I heard voices a moment to left and right; then the stillness and the powdering light enveloped all.

Next day, bored with donkey riding, I walked with the Arabs and saw little of my companions. Weymouth and the Countess, I think, were on the two riding-camels, Radolin and Mrs. Weymouth on their donkeys. We came to the edge of the Fayoum about five o’clock. That camping-ground was narrow. In tents, when jammed together, one can’t avoid hearing at least the tone of neighbouring talk, and I was struck by a certain acrimony in the Weymouth tent. Jessie Weymouth seemed complaining that Frank hadn’t spoken to her all day.

“I suppose,” she said, “you didn’t like my running out with Countie last night?”

Weymouth’s voice, quite good-humoured, answered:

“Oh, not a bit, why should I mind?”

By the ensuing silence I seemed to realise that Jessie Weymouth was disappointed. Perhaps I hadn’t really a feeling of suspense that evening, but, in reminiscence, it seems to me I had. Dinner was certainly a disharmonic feast: little Mrs. Weymouth audacious and rueful, Weymouth and the Countess subdued, Radolin artificial, our scoundrel and myself had to make the running. That fellow was needle-sharp, though not always correct in his conclusions.

“Mrs. Weymut got a fly in her little eye,” he said to me as I was turning in. “I make it all right to-morrow. I get a dancer at Sennourès. Oho, she is a good one! She make the married couples ’appy. We get some fresh eggs too.”

Severe silence in the tents to right and left that night.

A whole day’s travelling through the crops of the Fayoum brought us to the camping-ground outside Sennourès, among a grove of palm-trees--charming spot, but lacking the clear, cold spirituality of the desert night.

The dancer was certainly ‘a good one.’ What a baggage! All lithe, supple enticement, and jangle of shivering beads! The excitement of the Arabs, the shocked, goggling eyes of Jessie Weymouth--quite a little Puritan when it came to the point--the laughter of our scoundrel, Hélène Radolin’s aloofness, which kept even that daughter of Egypt in her place, were what impressed me during the performance.

Towards the end the Egyptian made a dead set at Weymouth, and, getting nothing out of him except his smile, became quite cross. Leaning down to our scoundrel and slinking her eyes round at the Countess, she murmured something malicious. Our laughing scoundrel patted her, and we broke up. In ten minutes our camp was empty--dancer, Arabs, all had gone off to the village. I went out and stood in darkness among the palm-trees, listening to the shivering of their leaves.

In the dining-tent Radolin was playing the guitar--a soothing sound after the vibrant Arab music. Presently I saw Weymouth come out. He stood under the lamp at the entrance, looking back; his face was fully lighted for me, but invisible, I think, to those within. I can still see the look on it. Adoration incarnate!

‘Hallo!’ I thought, ‘what’s this?’ And just then Hélène Radolin came out too. She passed him quietly; he did not attempt to speak or follow; but she saw. Oh, yes, she saw; then vanished into her tent. And Weymouth stood, rooted, as if struck by lightning, while, on and on, behind him rose the thrum of that guitar and all around us the shivering of the palm-leaves in a gusty breeze.

Quite the custom, I believe, in these days to laugh at this sort of thing--at such sudden leaps of an irresponsible force; to suggest that they are old-fashioned, overrated--literary, in fact. The equality of the sexes--they say--the tendency of women towards brains and trousers, have diminished Venus; and yet, I fancy what happened to my friend Weymouth may still happen to young gentlemen who talk as if love had no fevers and no proprietary instincts; as if, when you burn for a woman, you are willing to leave her to another, or share her with him without fuss. Of course there are men who have no blood in their veins; but my friend Weymouth unfortunately had--not for nothing was the sunny, spilt-wine look about his hair and cheeks and dark-blue eyes.

For the rest of our desert trip the situation hopelessly promoted that adoration. Little Jessie Weymouth certainly did her best to help. She was the only one of us blind to what had happened. Her perceptions, you see, were blunted by the life of strenuous duty which she and Weymouth led in term time, and by the customary exhaustion of her husband during the holidays. She could not imagine him otherwise than sober. But now--if ever a man were drunk! The thing became so patent that it was quite painful to see her continued blindness. Not till sunset of the second day, with the Fayoum behind us, in our high camp on the desert’s edge, did she appreciate tragedy. _Those two_ were sitting in camp-chairs close together, watching the sun go down. The Arabs, presented with a ram to soothe their grief at abandoning the joys of the Fayoum, were noisily preparing the animal to the idea of being eaten. Our scoundrel and Radolin were absent; I was sketching; Jessie Weymouth lying down in her tent. Those two were alone--their faces turned towards each other, their hands, perhaps, touching. A strange violet was in the light over the bare hills; how much they saw of it I know not, nor what they were saying to each other, when Jessie Weymouth came out of her tent, stretching and yawning, and, like the kitten she was, went stealing up behind, to startle them. Three yards away, unseen, unheard, I saw her stop. Her lips opened, her eyes went wide with amazement. Suddenly she covered them with her hands, turned round, and stole back into her tent.

Five minutes later out she came again, with bright, hard spots of colour in her cheeks. I saw her run up to them, her feverish attempts at gaiety; and I saw, too, that to them she simply did not exist. We none of us existed for them. They had found a world of their own, and we were shadows in the unreal world which they had left. You know the pink-flowered daphne, the scent of whose blossoms is very sweet, heavy, and slightly poisonous; sniff it too much and a kind of feverish fire will seize you. Those two had sniffed the daphne!

Walls have a singular value for civilised beings. In my thin tent between the thin tents of those two couples, prevented by lack of walls from any outlet to their feelings, I seemed to hear the smothered reproaches, the smothered longings. It was the silence of those two suddenly stricken lovers that was so impressive. I, literally, did not dare to speak to Weymouth while we were all mixed up like that. This English schoolmaster had lost, as if by magic, all power of seeing himself as others saw him. Not that those two ‘carried on’--nothing so normal; they just seemed to have stepped into quiet oblivion of everything but each other.

Even our scoundrel was puzzled. “In my house, when my wife behave bad, I beat her,” he said to me; “when I behave bad she scratch my face.” But there it was--we had no walls; Hélène Radolin could not be beaten, Weymouth could not have his face scratched--most awkward.

Things come to an end, and I never breathed more freely than when Mena House delivered us from that frightful close companionship.

As if by common consent, we dined at separate tables. After dinner I said to Weymouth:

“Come up and see the Sphinx by moonlight.”

He came, still in his dream. We reached the Sphinx in silence, and sat down over against her on the sand. At last I said:

“What are you going to do now, old man?”

“I can’t leave her.” It was as if we had discussed the thing a dozen times already.

“But you have to be back on the twentieth?”

“I know.”

“My dear fellow, it’s ruination. And Jessie?”

“She must do what she likes.”

“This is madness, Frank!”

“Perhaps. I can’t go; that’s all.”

“What about _her_?”

“I don’t know. I only know that where she goes I must.”

I just sat staring at the blunt shadow of the Sphinx’s broken profile on the moonlit sand. The strange, actionless, desert love-dream was at an end! Something definite--horrible, perhaps--must happen now! And I stammered out:

“For God’s sake, old boy, think of your wife, your work, yourself--be reasonable! It isn’t worth it, really!”

“Perhaps not. This has nothing to do with reason.”

From a master at an English Public School the remark appeared to me fantastic. And, suddenly, he got up, as if he had been bitten. He was realising suddenly the difference that walls make. His face had a tortured look. The woman he loved, walled up with the man she had married! Behind us the desert, hundreds of miles of clean, savage sand, and in it we humans--tame and spiritual! Before us walls, and we humans--savage, carnal again! Queer! I doubt if he saw the irony; but he left me sitting there and went hurrying back to the hotel.

I stayed on a little with the riddle of the Ages, feeling it simple compared with this riddle of the moment. Then I followed him down. Would it resolve itself in terms of l. s. d.? After all, these four people had to live--could they afford to play fast and loose with the realities? Hélène Radolin had no money; Weymouth his mastership and a few hundreds saved; Jessie Weymouth a retired Colonel for a father; Radolin his banking partnership.

A night of walls had its effect. Radolin took his wife back to Heliopolis next day. The Weymouths remained at Mena House; in three days they were due to sail.

I well remember thinking: ‘There, you see, it doesn’t do to exaggerate. This was a desert mirage and will pass like one. People are not struck by lightning!’ But in a mood of morbid curiosity I went out to Heliopolis.

In the tramcar on the way I felt a sort of disappointment--Hélène Radolin was a Roman Catholic, Frank Weymouth an English gentleman. The two facts put a stopper on what I wanted stopped. Yet we all have a sneaking love for the romantic, or--shall we say?--dramatic.

Well! The Radolins were gone. They had started that morning for Constantinople. In the Oriental hall where all this had begun I sat, browsing over my Turkish coffee, seeing again my friend Weymouth, languid and inert; his little wife’s flirtatious liveliness; Radolin so debonair; Hélène Radolin, silent, her ice-green eyes slightly reddened in the lids as if she had been crying. The white-garbed Berberines slipped by; Greek gentlemen entertained their dubious ladies; Germans raised a guttural racket; the orchestra twanged out the latest tango. Nothing was changed but those figures of my vision. And suddenly Weymouth materialised--standing as if lost, just where the lobby opened into the hall. From his face it was clear to me that he knew the Radolins were gone; before I could join him he went out hastily. I am sorry now that I did not follow.

That evening at Mena House I was just beginning to undress when Jessie Weymouth tapped on my door.

“Have you seen Frank?”

I told her where I had seen him in the afternoon.

“That woman!” she cried. “He’s not come back.”

I assured her that the Radolins were gone back home. She stared at me and began to cry. She cried and cried, and I did not try to stop her. She was not only desolate and miserable, but bitter and angry. ‘So long as she can be angry,’ I thought, ‘she’ll get over it. One is not angry under a death-blow.’

At last she had cried her misery out, but not her anger or dismay. What was she to do? I tried to persuade her that Frank would turn up in time for them to start to-morrow evening. He was probably trying to work the thing out of his system; she must look on it as a fever, a kind of illness. She laughed wildly, scornfully, and went out.

Weymouth did not turn up, but the morning brought me a letter, enclosing a cheque for three hundred pounds, a note to his wife, and a sealed envelope addressed to the headmaster of his Public School.

The letter to me ran as follows:

“OLD MAN,

“I admit that I am behaving like a cad; but it’s either this or
the sweet waters of oblivion; and there’s less scandal this way. I
have made up some story for my chief; please post it. The cheque
is for all my substance except some fifty pounds. Take care of it
for my wife; she’ll get another five hundred, about, out of the
turnover of our house. She will go to her father, no doubt, and
forget me, I hope. Do, please, like a good fellow, see her safely
on board. It’s not likely that I shall ever come back to England.
The future is quite dark, but where _she_ is, there I must be.
Poste restante Constantinople will find me, so far as I know at
present. Good-bye!

“Your affectionate
“F. W.”

I did see Jessie Weymouth on board her ship, and a precious business it was.

A week later I, too, started for Constantinople, partly because I had promised Mrs. Weymouth, partly because I could not reconcile myself to the vision of my friend in the grip of his passion, without a job, almost without money.

The Radolins inhabited an old house on the far shore almost opposite the Rumeli Hissar. I called on them without warning, and found Hélène Radolin alone. In a room all Turkish stuffs and shadowy lights, she looked very different from her desert self. She had regained her pale languor, but her face had a definite spirit, lacking when I first saw her. She spoke quite freely.

“I love him; but it is madness. I have tried to send him away; he will not go. You see, I am a Catholic; my religion means much to me. I must not go away with him. Take him back to England with you; I cannot bear to see him ruin his life like this for me.”

I confess to looking at her with the wonder whether it was religion or the lack of l. s. d.

“Ah!” she said. “You don’t understand; you think I am afraid of poverty with him. No! I am afraid of losing my soul, and his.”

The way she said that was extraordinarily impressive. I asked her if she saw him.

“Yes; he comes. I have to let him. I cannot bear the look on his face when I say ‘No.’” She gave me his address.

He had a garret in a little Greek hotel, just above Galata--a ramshackle place, chosen for its cheapness. He did not seem surprised to see me. But I was startled. His face, shrunken and lined, had a bitter, burnt-up look, which deepened the set and colour of his eyes till they looked almost black. A long bout of disease will produce just that effect.

“If she didn’t love me,” he said, “I could bear it. But she does. Well! So long as I can see her I shall stand it; and she’ll come--she’ll come to me at last.”

I repeated her words to me; I spoke of his wife, of England--no memory, no allusion, no appeal touched him.

I stayed a month and saw him nearly every day; I did not move him by one jot. At the end of that month I should never have known him for the Frank Weymouth who had started out with us from Mena House on New Year’s Day. Changed! He was! I had managed to get him a teaching job through a man I knew at the Embassy--a poor enough job--a bare subsistence. And, watching my friend day by day, I began to have a feeling of hatred for that woman. Yet I knew that her refusal to indulge their passion was truly religious. She really did see her lost soul and his, whirling entwined through purgatory, like the souls of Paola and Francesca in Watts’ picture. Call it superstition, or what you will, her scruples were entirely genuine, and, from a certain point of view, quite laudable.

As for Radolin, he took it all precisely as if there were nothing to take; smooth and debonair as ever--a little harder about the mouth and eyes, and that was all.

The morning before I went home I made my way once more up the evil-smelling stairs to my friend’s garret. He was standing at the window, looking down over the bridge--that tragic bridge of Galata where the blind and halt used to trade, perhaps still trade, the sight of their misfortunes. We stood there side by side.

“Frank,” I said, “this can’t go on! Do you ever look at yourself in the glass?”

No smile can be so bitter as a smile that used to be sunny.

“So long as I can see her I shall last out.”

“You surely don’t want a woman to feel she’s lost her soul, and is making you lose yours? She’s perfectly sincere in that.”

“I know. I’ve given up asking. So long as I can see her, that’s all.”

It was mania!

That afternoon I took a boat over to the Radolins. It was April--the first real day of spring, balmy and warm. The Judas-trees of the Rumeli Hissar were budding, the sun colouring the water with tints of opal; and all the strange city of mosques and minarets, Western commerce and Oriental beggary, was wonderfully living under that first spring sun. I brought my boat up to the Radolins’ landing-stage, and got out. I mounted the steps, greened over by the wash of the water, and entered their little garden courtyard. I had never come this way before, and stood for a moment looking through the mimosas and bougainvillæas for a door that would satisfy formality. There was a grille to the left, but to reach it I would have to pass in front of the wide ground-floor window, whence I had sometimes looked out over the water to the Rumeli Hissar. My shoes made no noise on the marble path, but what I saw in the room stopped me from trying to pass.

Hélène Radolin was sitting perfectly still in a low chair sideways to the window, her hands on her lap, her eyes fixed on the tiled floor, where a streak of sunlight fell. In the curve of her grand piano, resting his elbows on it, Weymouth was leaning back, equally still, gazing down at her. That was all. But the impression I received of life arrested, of frozen lava, was in a way terrible. I stole back down the steps into my boat, and out on to the opal-tinted waters.

I have nothing more to tell you of this business. The war came down on us all soon after. Rumours I have heard, but I know nothing, as they say, of my own knowledge. Yet it has seemed to me worth while to set down this record of a ‘stroke of lightning’ in days when people laugh at such absurdities.

1921.

VIRTUE

Harold Mellesh, minor clerk in an accident assurance society, having occasion to be present at a certain police court to give evidence in the matter of a smashed car, stood riveted by manifestations of the law entirely new to him. His eyes, blue and rather like those of a baby, were opened very widely, his ingenuous forehead wrinkled, his curly hair was moving on his scalp, his fists involuntarily clenching his straw hat. He had seen four ladies of the town dealt with--three ‘jugged,’ and one fined--before his sensations reached their climax. Perhaps she was prettier than the others, certainly younger, and she was crying.

“First time you’ve been here--two pounds, and ten shillings costs.”

“But I haven’t any money, sir.”

“Very well--fourteen days.”

Tears streaking the remains of powder; a queer little sound--the sensations within young Mellesh simmered like a kettle coming to the boil. He touched a dark blue sleeve in front of him.

“Here,” he said, “I’ll pay her fine.”

He felt the glance of the policeman running over him like a chilly insect.

“Friend of yours?”

“No.”

“I shouldn’t, then. She’ll be here again within the month.”

The girl was passing, he saw the swallowing movement of her throat and said with desperation:

“I don’t care. I’ll pay it.”

The blue man’s glance crept about him clammily.

“Come with me, then.”

Young Mellesh followed him out.

“Here,” said his policeman to the one in charge of the girl, “this gentleman’ll pay the fine.”

Conscious of a confusion of glances, of his own cheeks reddening furiously, young Mellesh brought out his money--just two pounds fifteen; and, handing over the two pounds ten, he thought, ‘My hat! What would Alice say?’

He heard the girl’s gasped out “Ow! Thank you!” his policeman’s muttered “Waste o’ money!” and passed out into the street. Now that his feelings had given off that two pound ten’s worth of steam he felt chilly and dazed, as if virtue had gone out of him. A voice behind him said:

“Thank you ever so much--it _was_ kind of you.”

Raising his straw hat he stood uncomfortably, to let her pass.

She pushed a card into his hand. “Any time you’re passing, I’ll be glad to see you; I’m very grateful.”

“Not at all!” With a smile, confused like her own, he turned off towards his office.

All day, among his accidents, he felt uncertain. Had he been a fool; had he been a hero? Sometimes he thought: ‘What brutes they are to those girls!’ and sometimes: ‘Don’t know; suppose they must do something about it.’ And he avoided considering how to explain the absence of two pounds ten shillings on which Alice had been reckoning. His soul was simple like the expressions on his face.

He reached home at the usual hour--six-thirty. His home was grey and small and had a little bit of green up Chalk Farm way, where the Tube made all things possible.

His wife, who had just put their baby daughter to bed, was sitting in the parlour darning his socks. She looked up--surely her forehead was rather like a knee!

“You wear your socks properly, Harold,” she said; “it’s all I can do to mend this pair.” Her eyes were china-blue, round like saucers; her voice had the monotony of one brought up to minimise emotion. A farmer’s daughter, young Mellesh had become engaged to her during a holiday in Somerset. Pale himself, from office and the heat, he thought how pale she looked.

“The heat’s dreadful, isn’t it?” she said. “Sometimes I wish we’d never had baby. It does tie you in the evenings. I _am_ looking forward to Whitsuntide, that I am.”

Young Mellesh, tall and straggly, bent over and kissed her forehead. How on earth to let her know that he had ‘blewed’ their holiday? He was realising that he had done an awful thing. Perhaps--oh! surely--she would understand how he couldn’t sit and see that girl ‘jugged’ before his eyes for want of it! But not until the end of their small supper did he say abruptly:

“I got quite upset this morning, Alice. Had to go down to the police court about that car smash I told you of, and afterwards I saw them run in a lot of those Piccadilly girls. It fair sickened me to see the way they treat them.”

His wife looked up; her face was childlike.

“Why, what do they do to them?”

“Quod them for speakin’ to men in the street.”

“I s’pose they’re up to no good.”

Irritated by the matter-of-factness in her voice, he went on:

“They speak to ’em as if they were dirt.”

“Well, aren’t they?”

“They may be a loose lot, but so are the men.”

“Men wouldn’t be so loose if they weren’t there.”

“I suppose it’s what you call a vicious circle;” and, pleased with his play on words, he added: “One or two of them were pretty.”

His wife smiled; her smile had a natural teasing quality.

“They treat _them_ better, I suppose?”

That was jolly cynical! and he blurted out:

“One, quite young, never there before, they gave her a fortnight just because she hadn’t any money--I couldn’t stick it; I paid her fine.”

There was sweat on his forehead. His wife’s face had gone quite pink.

“You paid? How much?”

He was on the point of saying: ‘Ten shillings.’ But something in his soul revolted. “Regular pill--two pound ten;” and he thought glumly: ‘Oh! what a fool I’ve been!’

He did wish Alice wouldn’t open her mouth like that, when nothing was coming out--made her look so silly! Her face puckered suddenly, then became quite blank; he was moved as if he had hit or pinched her.

“Awfully sorry, Alice,” he muttered, “never meant to--she--she cried.”

“Course she cried! You fool, Harold!”

He got up, very much disturbed.

“Well, and what would _you_ have done?”

“Me? Let her stew in her own juice, of course. It wasn’t your affair.”

She too had risen. He thrust his fingers through his hair. The girl’s face, tear-streaked, confusedly pretty, had come up before him, her soft common grateful voice tickled his ears again. His wife turned her back. So! he was in for a fit of sulks. Well! No doubt he had deserved it.