Chapter VIII (2)

“It’s perfect, Richard. This is the most beautiful spot in the world.”

“Sure,” he answered, softly drawling. “In de war time de Yanks nearly burn d’house heah. Sherman’s Yanks. Sure dey did, po’ful angry wi’ ole Massa dey was, ’cos he hid up d’ silver plate afore he went away. My ole father was de factotalum den. De Yanks took’m, suh; dey took’m; and de major he tell my fader to show’m whar de plate was. My ole fader he look at’m an’ say: ‘Wot yuh take me foh? Yuh take me for a sneakin’ nigger? No, suh, yuh do wot yuh like wid dis chile he ain’t goin’ to act no Judas. No, suh!’ And de Yankee major he put’m up against dat tall live-oak dar, an’ he say: ‘Yu darn ungrateful nigger. I’se come all dis way to set yuh free. Now, whar’s dat silver plate or I shoot yuh up, sure!’ ‘No, suh,’ says my fader, ‘shoot away. I’se never goin’ t’tell.’ So dey begin to shoot, and shot all roun’m to skeer’m up. I was a lil’ boy den, an’ I see my ole fader wid my own eyes, suh, standin’ thar’s bold’s Peter. No, suh, dey didn’t never get no word from him; he loved de folk heah; sure he did.”

The old man smiled; and in that beatific smile I saw not only his perennial pleasure in the well-known story, but the fact that he too would have stood there with the bullets raining round him sooner than betray the folk he loved.

“Fine story, Richard. But--very silly obstinate old man, your father, wasn’t he?”

He looked at me with a sort of startled anger, which slowly broadened into a grin; then broke into soft hoarse laughter.

“Oh! yes, suh, sure! Berry silly obstinacious ole man. Yes, suh, indeed!” And he went off cackling to himself.

He had only just gone when I heard footsteps again behind my azalea clump and Miss Monroy’s voice:

“Your philosophy is that of faun and nymph. But can you play the part?”

“Only let me try.” Those words had such a fevered ring that in imagination I could see Vaness all flushed, his fine eyes shining, his well-kept hands trembling, his lips a little protruded.

There came a laugh, high, gay, sweet.

“Very well then; catch me!” I heard a swish of skirt against the shrubs, the sounds of flight; an astonished gasp from Vaness, and the heavy thud thud of his feet following on the path through the azalea maze. I hoped fervently that they would not suddenly come running past and see me sitting there. My straining ears caught another laugh far off, a panting sound, a muttered oath, a far-away coo-ee! And then, staggering, winded, pale with heat and with vexation, Vaness appeared, caught sight of me and stood a moment--baff! Sweat was running down his face, his hand was clutching at his side, his stomach heaved--a hunter beaten and undignified. He muttered, turned abruptly on his heel, and left me staring at where his fastidious dandyism and all that it stood for had so abruptly come undone.

I know not how he and Miss Monroy got home to Charleston; not in the same car, I guess. As for me, I travelled deep in thought, conscious of having witnessed something rather tragic, not looking forward to my next encounter with Vaness.

He was not at dinner, but the girl was--radiant as ever; and though I was glad she had not been caught I was almost angry at the signal triumph of her youth. She wore a black dress with a red flower in her hair and another at her breast, and had never looked so vital and so pretty. Instead of dallying with my cigar beside cool waters in the lounge of the hotel I strolled out afterwards on the Battery and sat down beside the statue of a tutelary personage. A lovely evening: from some tree or shrub close by emerged an adorable faint fragrance, and in the white electric light the acacia foliage was patterned out against a thrilling blue sky. If there were no fireflies abroad there should have been. A night for hedonists, indeed!

And suddenly there came before me two freaks of vision--Vaness’s well-dressed person, panting, pale, perplexed; and beside him the old darkie’s father, bound to the live-oak, with the bullets whistling past and his face transfigured. There they stood alongside--the creed of pleasure, which depended for fulfilment on its waist measurement; and the creed of love devoted unto death!

‘Aha!’ I thought, ‘which of the two laughs _last_?’

And just then I saw Vaness himself beneath a lamp; cigar in mouth and cape flung back so that its silk lining shone. Pale and heavy, in the cruel white light, his face had a bitter look. And I was sorry--very sorry, at that moment, for Rupert K. Vaness.

1920.

TIMBER

Sir Arthur Hirries, Baronet, of Hirriehugh, in a northern county, came to the decision to sell his timber, in that state of mind--common during the war--which may be called patrio-profiteering. Like newspaper proprietors, writers on strategy, shipbuilders, owners of factories, makers of arms and the rest of the working classes at large, his mood was: ‘Let me serve my country, and if thereby my profits are increased, let me put up with it, and invest in National Bonds.’

With an encumbered estate and some of the best coverts in that northern county, it had not become practical politics to sell his timber till the Government wanted it at all costs. To let his shooting had been more profitable, until now, when a patriotic action and a stroke of business had become synonymous. A man of sixty-five, but not yet grey, with a reddish tinge in his moustache, cheeks, lips and eyelids, slightly knock-kneed, and with large, rather spreading feet, he moved in the best circles in a somewhat embarrassed manner. At the enhanced price, the timber at Hirriehugh would enfranchise him for the remainder of his days. He sold it therefore one day of April when the war news was bad, to a Government official on the spot. He sold it at half-past five in the afternoon, practically for cash down, and drank a stiff whisky and soda to wash away the taste of the transaction; for, though no sentimentalist, his great-great-grandfather had planted most of it, and his grandfather the rest. Royalty, too, had shot there in its time and he himself (never much of a sportsman) had missed more birds in the rides and hollows of his fine coverts than he cared to remember. But the country was in need, and the price considerable. Bidding the Government official good-bye, he lighted a cigar, and went across the park to take a farewell stroll among his timber.

He entered the home covert by a path leading through a group of pear-trees just coming into bloom. Smoking cigars and drinking whisky in the afternoon in preference to tea, Sir Arthur Hirries had not much sense of natural beauty. But those pear-trees impressed him, greenish white against blue sky and fleecy thick clouds which looked as if they had snow in them. They were deuced pretty, and promised a good year for fruit, if they escaped the late frosts, though it certainly looked like freezing to-night! He paused a moment at the wicket gate to glance back at those scantily clothed white maidens posing on the outskirts of his timber. Such was not the vision of Sir Arthur Hirries, who was considering how he should invest the balance of the cash down after paying off his mortgages. National Bonds--the country was in need!

Passing through the gate he entered the ride of the home covert. Variety lay like colour on his woods. They stretched for miles, and his ancestors had planted almost every kind of tree--beech, oak, birch, sycamore, ash, elm, hazel, holly, pine; a lime-tree and a hornbeam here and there, and further in among the winding coverts, spinneys and belts of larch. The evening air was sharp, and sleet showers came whirling from those bright clouds; he walked briskly, drawing at his richly fragrant cigar, the whisky still warm within him. He walked thinking, with a gentle melancholy slowly turning a little sulky, that he would never again be pointing out with his shooting stick to such or such a guest where he was to stand to get the best birds over him. The pheasants had been let down during the war, but he put up two or three old cocks, who went clattering and whirring out to left and right; and rabbits crossed the rides quietly to and fro, within easy shot. He came to where Royalty had stood fifteen years ago during the last drive. He remembered Royalty saying: “Very pretty shooting at that last stand, Hirries; birds just about as high as I like them.” The ground indeed rose rather steeply there, and the timber was oak and ash, with a few dark pines sprinkled into the bare greyish twiggery of the oaks, always costive in spring, and the just greening feather of the ashes.

“They’ll be cutting those pines first,” he thought--strapping trees, straight as the lines of Euclid, and free of branches, save at their tops. In the brisk wind those tops swayed a little and gave forth soft complaint. ‘Three times my age,’ he thought; ‘prime timber.’ The ride wound sharply and entered a belt of larch, whose steep rise entirely barred off the rather sinister sunset--a dark and wistful wood, delicate dun and grey, whose green shoots and crimson tips would have perfumed the evening coolness, but for the cigar smoke in his nostrils. ‘They’ll have this spinney for pit props,’ he thought; and, taking a cross ride through it, he emerged in a heathery glen of birch-trees. No forester, he wondered if they would make anything of those whitened, glistening shapes. His cigar had gone out now, and he leaned against one of the satin-smooth stems, under the lacery of twig and bud, sheltering the flame of a relighting match. A hare lopped away among the bilberry shoots; a jay, painted like a fan, squawked and flustered past him up the glen. Interested in birds, and wanting just one more jay to complete a fine stuffed group of them, Sir Arthur, though devoid of a gun, followed, to see where ‘the beggar’s’ nest was. The glen dipped rapidly, and the character of the timber changed, assuming greater girth and solidity. There was a lot of beech here--a bit he did not know, for though taken-in by the beaters, no guns could be stationed there because of the lack of undergrowth. The jay had vanished, and light had begun to fail. ‘Must get back,’ he thought, ‘or I shall be late for dinner.’ For a moment he debated whether to retrace his steps, or cut across the beeches and regain the home covert by a loop. The jay, reappearing to the left, decided him to cross the beech grove. He did so, and took a narrow ride up through a dark bit of mixed timber with heavy undergrowth. The ride, after favouring the left for a little, bent away to the right; Sir Arthur followed it hurriedly, conscious that twilight was gathering fast. It must bend again to the left in a minute! It did, and then to the right, and, the undergrowth remaining thick, he could only follow on, or else retrace his steps. He followed on, beginning to get hot in spite of a sleet shower falling through the dusk. He was not framed by Nature for swift travelling--his knees turning in and his toes turning out--but he went at a good bat, uncomfortably aware that the ride was still taking him away from home, and expecting it at any minute to turn left again. It did not, and hot, out of breath, a little bewildered, he stood still in three-quarter darkness, to listen. Not a sound, save that of wind in the tops of the trees, and a faint creaking of timber, where two stems had grown athwart and were touching.

The path was a regular will o’ the wisp. He must make a bee line of it through the undergrowth into another ride! He had never before been amongst his timber in the dusk, and he found the shapes of the confounded trees more weird, and as if menacing, that he had ever dreamed of. He stumbled quickly on in and out of them among the undergrowth, without coming to a ride.

‘Here I am stuck in this damned wood!’ he thought. To call these formidably encircling shapes ‘a wood’ gave him relief. After all, it was _his_ wood, and nothing very untoward could happen to a man in his own wood, however dark it might get; he could not be more than a mile and a half at the outside from his dining-room! He looked at his watch, whose hands he could just see--nearly half-past seven! The sleet had become snow, but it hardly fell on him, so thick was the timber just here. But he had no overcoat, and suddenly he felt that first sickening little drop in his chest which presages alarm. Nobody knew he was in this damned wood! And in a quarter of an hour it would be black as your hat! He _must_ get on and out! The trees amongst which he was stumbling produced quite a sick feeling now in one who hitherto had never taken trees seriously. What monstrous growths they were! The thought that seeds, tiny seeds or saplings, planted by his ancestors, could attain such huge impending and imprisoning bulk--the ghostly great growths, mounting up to heaven and shutting off this world, exasperated and unnerved him. He began to run, caught his foot in a root, and fell flat on his face. The cursed trees seemed to have a down on him! Rubbing elbows and forehead with his snow-wetted hands, he leaned against a trunk to get his breath, and summon the sense of direction to his brain. Once as a young man he had been ‘bushed’ at night in Vancouver Island; quite a scary business! But he had come out all right, though his camp had been the only civilised spot within a radius of twenty miles. And here he was, on his own estate, within a mile or two of home, getting into a funk. It was childish! And he laughed. The wind answered, sighing and threshing in the tree tops. There must be a regular blizzard blowing now, and, to judge by the cold, from the north--but whether north-east or north-west was the question. Besides, how keep definite direction without a compass in the dark? The timber, too, with its thick trunks, diverted the wind into keen, directionless draughts. He looked up, but could make nothing of the two or three stars that he could see. It was a mess! And he lighted a second cigar with some difficulty, for he had begun to shiver. The wind in this blasted wood cut through his Norfolk jacket and crawled about his body, which had become hot from his exertions, and now felt clammy and half-frozen. This would mean pneumonia, if he didn’t look out! And, half feeling his way from trunk to trunk, he started on again, but for all he could tell he might be going round in a circle, might even be crossing rides without realising, and again that sickening drop occurred in his chest. He stood still and shouted. He had the feeling of shouting into walls of timber, dark and heavy, which threw the sound back at him.

‘Curse you!’ he thought. ‘Wish I’d sold you six months ago!’ The wind fleered and mowed in the tree tops; and he started off again at a run in that dark wilderness; till, hitting his head against a low branch, he fell, stunned. He lay several minutes unconscious, came to himself deadly cold, and struggled up on to his feet.

‘By Jove!’ he thought, with a sort of stammer in his brain; ‘this is a bad business! I may be out here all night!’ For an unimaginative man, it was extraordinary what vivid images he had just then. He saw the face of the Government official who had bought his timber, and the slight grimace with which he had agreed to the price. He saw his butler, after the gong had gone, standing like a stuck pig by the sideboard, waiting for him to come down. What would they do when he didn’t come? Would they have the _nous_ to imagine that he might have lost his way in the coverts, and take lanterns and search for him? Far more likely they would think he had walked over to Greenlands or Berrymoor, and stayed there to dinner. And, suddenly, he saw himself slowly freezing out here, in the snowy night, among this cursed timber. With a vigorous shake, he butted again into the darkness among the tree trunks. He was angry now--with himself, with the night, with the trees; so angry that he actually let out with his fist at a trunk against which he had stumbled, and scored his knuckles. It was humiliating; and Sir Arthur Hirries was not accustomed to humiliation. In anybody else’s wood--yes; but to be lost like this in one’s own coverts! Well, if he had to walk all night, he would get out! And he plunged on doggedly in the darkness.

He was fighting with his timber now, as if the thing were alive and each tree an enemy. In the interminable stumbling exertion of that groping progress his angry mood gave place to half-comatose philosophy. Trees! His great-great-grandfather had planted them! His own was the fifth man’s life, but the trees were almost as young as ever; they made nothing of a man’s life! He sniggered: and a man made nothing of theirs! Did they know they were going to be cut down? All the better if they did, and were sweating in their shoes. He pinched himself--his thoughts were becoming so queer! He remembered that once, when his liver was out of order, trees had seemed to him like solid, tall diseases--bulbous, scarred, cavernous, witch-armed, fungoid emanations of the earth. Well, so they were! And he was among them, on a snowy pitch-black night, engaged in this death-struggle! The occurrence of the word death in his thoughts brought him up all standing. Why couldn’t he concentrate his mind on getting out; why was he mooning about the life and nature of trees instead of trying to remember the conformation of his coverts, so as to rekindle in himself some sense of general direction? He struck a number of matches, to get a sight of his watch again. Great heaven! He had been walking nearly two hours since he last looked at it; and in what direction? They said a man in a fog went round and round because of some kink in his brain! He began now to feel the trees, searching for a hollow trunk. A hollow would be some protection from the cold--his first conscious confession of exhaustion. He was not in training, and he was sixty-five. The thought: ‘Can’t keep this up much longer,’ caused a second explosion of sullen anger. Damnation! Here he was--for all he could tell--standing where he had sat perhaps a dozen times on his spread shooting stick; watching sunlight on bare twigs, or the nose of his spaniel twitching beside him, listening to the tap of the beaters’ sticks, and the shrill, drawn-out: “Marrk! Cock over!” Would they let the dogs out, to pick up his tracks? No! ten to one they would assume he was staying the night at the Summertons, or at Lady Mary’s, as he had done before now, after dining there. And suddenly his strained heart leaped. He had struck a ride again! His mind slipped back into place like an elastic let-go, relaxed, quivering gratefully. He had only to follow this ride, and somewhere, somehow, he would come out. And be hanged if he would let them know what a fool he had made of himself! Right or left--which way? He turned so that the flying snow came on his back, hurrying forward between the denser darkness on either hand, where the timber stood in walls, moving his arms across and across his body, as if dragging a concertina to full stretch, to make sure that he was keeping in the path. He went what seemed an interminable way like this, till he was brought up all standing by trees, and could find no outlet, no continuation. Turning in his tracks, with the snow in his face now, he retraced his steps till once more he was brought-up short by trees. He stood panting. It was ghastly--ghastly! And in a panic he dived this way and that to find the bend, the turning, the way on. The sleet stung his eyes, the wind fleered and whistled, the boughs sloughed and moaned. He struck matches, trying to shade them with his cold, wet hands, but one by one they went out, and still he found no turning. The ride must be blind-alley at either end, the turning be down the side somewhere! Hope revived in him. Never say die! He began a second retracing of his steps, feeling the trunks along one side, to find a gap. His breath came with difficulty. What would old Brodley say if he could see him, soaked, sweating, frozen, tired to death, stumbling along in the darkness among this cursed timber--old Brodley who had told him his heart was in poor case!... A gap? Ah! No trunks--a ride at last! He turned, felt a sharp pain in his knee and pitched forward. He could not rise--the knee dislocated six years ago was out again. Sir Arthur Hirries clenched his teeth. Nothing more could happen to him! But after a minute--blank and bitter--he began to crawl along the new ride. Oddly he felt less discouraged and alarmed on hands and knee--for he could use but one. It was a relief to have his eyes fixed on the ground, not peering at the tree trunks; or perhaps there was less strain for the moment on his heart. He crawled, stopping every minute or so, to renew his strength. He crawled mechanically, waiting for his heart, his knee, his lungs to stop him. The earth was snowed over, and he could feel its cold wetness as he scraped along. Good tracks to follow, if anybody struck them! But in this dark forest----! In one of his halts, drying his hands as best he could, he struck a match, and sheltering it desperately, fumbled out his watch. Past ten o’clock. He wound the watch, and put it back against his heart. If only he could wind his heart! And squatting there he counted his matches--four! He thought grimly: ‘I won’t light them to show me my blasted trees. I’ve got a cigar left; I’ll keep them for that!’ And he crawled on again. He must keep going while he could!

He crawled till his heart and lungs and knee struck work; and, leaning his back against a tree, sat huddled together, so exhausted that he felt nothing save a sort of bitter heartache. He even dropped asleep, waking with a shudder, dragged from a dream arm-chair at the Club into this cold, wet darkness and the blizzard moaning in the trees. He tried to crawl again, but could not, and for some minutes stayed motionless, hugging his body with his arms. ‘Well,’ he thought vaguely, ‘I _have_ done it!’ His mind was in such lethargy that he could not even pity himself. His matches: could he make a fire? But he was no woodsman, and, though he groped around, could find no fuel that was not soaking wet. He scraped a hole and with what papers he had in his pockets tried to kindle the wet wood. No good! He had only two matches left now, and he remembered his cigar. He took it out, bit the end off, and began with infinite precautions to prepare for lighting it. The first burned, and the cigar drew. He had one match left, in case he dozed and let the thing go out. Looking up through the blackness he could see a star. He fixed his eyes on it, and leaning against the trunk drew the smoke down into his lungs. With his arms crossed tightly on his breast he smoked very slowly. When it was finished--what? Cold, and the wind in the trees until the morning! Halfway through the cigar, he dozed off, slept a long time, and woke up so cold that he could barely summon vitality enough to strike his last match. By some miracle it burned, and he got his cigar to draw again. This time he smoked it nearly to its end, without mentality, almost without feeling, except the physical sense of bitter cold. Once with a sudden clearing of the brain, he thought faintly: ‘Thank God, I sold the--trees, and they’ll all come down!’ The thought drifted away in frozen incoherence, drifted out like his cigar smoke into the sleet; and with a faint grin on his lips he dozed off again....

An under-keeper found him at ten o’clock next morning, blue from cold, under a tall elm-tree, within a mile of his bed, one leg stretched out, the other hunched up toward his chest, with its foot dug into the undergrowth for warmth, his head huddled into the collar of his coat, his arms crossed on his breast. They said he must have been dead at least five hours. Along one side snow had drifted against him; but the trunk had saved his back and other side. Above him, the spindly top boughs of that tall tree were covered with green-gold clusters of tiny crinkled elm flowers, against a deep blue sky--gay as a song of perfect praise. The wind had dropped, and after the cold of the night the birds were singing their clearest in the sunshine.

They did not cut down the elm-tree under which they found his body, with the rest of the sold timber, but put a little iron fence round it, and a little tablet on its trunk.

1920.

SANTA LUCIA

Returning from the English church at Monte Carlo towards his hotel, old Trevillian paused at a bend in the road to rest his thin calves. Through a mimosa-tree the sea was visible, very blue, and Trevillian’s eyes rested on it with the filmy brown stare of old age.

Monte Carlo was changed, but that blue, tideless, impassive sea was the same as on his first visit forty-five years ago, and this was pleasant to one conservative by nature. Since then he had married, made money and inherited more, ‘raised,’ as Americans called it, a family--all, except his daughter Agatha, out in the world--had been widowed, and developed old man’s cough. He and Agatha now left The Cedars, their country house in Hertfordshire, for the Riviera, with the annual regularity of swallows. Usually they stayed at Nice or Cannes, but this year, because a friend of Agatha’s was the wife of the English chaplain, they had chosen Monte Carlo.

It was near the end of their stay, and the April sun hot.

Trevillian passed a thin hand down his thin, brown, hairy face, where bushy eyebrows were still dark but the pointed beard white, and the effect, under a rather wide-brimmed brown hat, almost too Spanish for an English bank director. He was fond of saying that some of the best Cornish families had Spanish blood in their veins; whether Iberian or Armadesque he did not specify. The theory in any case went well with his formalism, growing more formal every year.

Agatha having stayed in with a cold, he had been to service by himself. A poor gathering! The English out here were a rackety lot. Among the congregation to whom he had that morning read the lessons he had noted, for instance, that old blackguard Telford, who had run off with two men’s wives in his time, and was now living with a Frenchwoman, they said. What on earth was _he_ doing in church? And that ostracised couple, the Gaddenhams, who had the villa near Roquebrune? She used his name, but they had never been married, for Gaddenham’s wife was still alive. And, more seriously, had he observed Mrs. Rolfe, who before the war used to come with her husband--now in India--to The Cedars to shoot the coverts in November. Young Lord Chesherford was hanging about her, they said. That would end in scandal to a certainty. Never without uneasiness did he see that woman, with whom his daughter was on terms of some intimacy. Grass widows were dangerous, especially in a place like this. He must give Agatha a hint. Such doubtful people, he felt, had no business to attend Divine service; yet it was difficult to disapprove of people coming to church, and, after all, most of them did not! A man of the world, however strong a churchman, could, of course, rub shoulders with anyone, but it was different when they came near one’s womenfolk or into the halls of one’s formal beliefs. To encroach like that showed no sense of the fitness of things. He must certainly speak to Agatha.

The road had lain uphill, and he took breaths of the mimosa-scented air, carefully regulating them so as not to provoke his cough. He was about to proceed on his way when a piano-organ across the road burst into tune. The man who turned the handle was the usual moustachioed Italian with restive eyes and a game leg; the animal who drew it the customary little grey donkey; the singer the proverbial dark girl with an orange head-kerchief; the song she sang the immemorial ‘Santa Lucia.’ Her brassy voice blared out the full metallic ‘a’s,’ which seemed to hit the air as hammers hit the wires of a czymbal. Trevillian had some music in his soul; he often started out for the Casino concert, though he generally arrived in the playing-rooms, not, indeed, to adventure more than a five-franc piece or two, for he disapproved of gambling, but because their motley irregularity titillated his formalism, made him feel like a boy a little out of school. He could distinguish, however, between several tunes, and knew this to be neither ‘God Save the King,’ ‘Rule Britannia,’ ‘Tipperary,’ nor ‘Funiculi-Funicula.’ Indeed, it had to him a kind of separate ring, a resonance oddly intimate, as if in some other life it had been the beating, the hammering rhythm of his heart. Queer sensation--quite a queer sensation! And he stood, blinking. Of course, he knew that tune now that he heard the words--Santa Lucia; but in what previous existence had its miauling awakened something deep, hot, almost savage within him, sweet and luring like a strange fruit or the scent of a tropical flower? ‘San-ta Luci-i-a! San-ta Luci-i-a!’ Lost! And yet so close to the fingers of his recollection that they itched! The girl stopped singing and came across to him--a gaudy baggage, with her orange scarf, her beads, the whites of her eyes, and all those teeth! These Latins, emotional, vibrant, light-hearted and probably light-fingered--an inferior race! He felt in his pocket, produced a franc, and moved on slowly.

But at the next bend in the road he halted again. The girl had recommenced, in gratitude for his franc--‘Santa Luci-ia!’ What was it buried in him under the fallen leaves of years and years?

The pink clusters of a pepper-tree dropped from behind a low garden wall right over him while he stood there. The air tingled with its faint savourous perfume, true essence of the South. And again that conviction of a previous existence, of something sweet, burning, poignant, caught him in the Adam’s apple veiled by his beard. Was it something he had dreamed? Was that the matter with him now--while the organ wailed, the girl’s song vibrated? Trevillian’s stare lighted on the prickly pears and aloes above the low, pink wall. The savagery of those plants jerked his mind forward almost to the pitch of--what? A youth passed, smoking a maize-coloured cigarette, leaving a perfume of Latakia, that tobacco of his own youth when he, too, smoked cigarettes made of its black, strong, fragrant threads. He gazed blankly at the half-obliterated name on the dilapidated garden gate, and spelled it aloud: “V lla Be u S te. Villa Beau Site! Beau----! By God! I’ve got it!”

At the unbecoming vigour of his ejaculation a smile of release, wrinkling round his eyes, furrowed his thin brown cheeks. He went up to the gate. What a coincidence! The very----! He stood staring into a tangled garden through the fog of forty-five years, resting his large prayer-book with its big print on the top rail of the old green gate; then, looking up and down the road like a boy about to steal cherries, he lifted the latch and passed in.

Nobody lived here now, he should say. The old pink villa, glimpsed some sixty yards away at the end of that little wilderness, was shuttered, and its paint seemed peeling off. Beau Site! That _was_ the name! And this the gate he had been wont to use into this lower garden, invisible from the house. And--yes--here was the little fountain, broken and discoloured now, with the same gargoyle face, and water still dripping from its mouth. And here--the old stone seat his cloak had so often covered. Grown over now, all of it; unpruned the lilacs, mimosas, palms, making that dry rustling when the breeze crept into them. He opened his prayer-book, laid it on the seat, and carefully sat down--he never sat on unprotected stone. He had passed into another world, screened from any eye by the overgrown shrubs and tangled foliage. And, slowly, while he sat there the frost of nearly half a century thawed.

Yes! Little by little, avidly, yet as it were unwillingly, he remembered--sitting on his prayer-book, out of the sun, under the flowering tangled trees.

He had been twenty-six, just after he went into the family bank--he recollected--such a very sucking partner. A neglected cold had given him the first of those bronchial attacks of which he was now reaping the aftermath. Those were the days when, in the chill of a London winter, he would, dandy-like, wear thin underclothes and no overcoat. Still coughing at Easter, he had taken three weeks off and a ticket to Mentone. A cousin of his was engaged to a Russian girl whose family had a villa there, and he had pitched his tent in a little hotel almost next door. The Russians of _that_ day were the Russians of the Turgenev novels, which Agatha had made him read. A simple, trilingual family of gentlefolk, the Rostakovs--father, mother, and two daughters. What was it they had called _him_--Philip Philipovitch? Monsieur Rostakov with his beard, his witty French stories, imperfectly understood by young Trevillian, his zest for food and drink, his thick lips, and, as they said, his easy morals--quite a dog in his way! And Madame, _née_ Princesse Nogárin (a Tartar strain in her, his cousin said), ‘spirituelle,’ somewhat worn out by Monsieur Rostakov and her belief in the transmigration of souls. And Varvara, the eldest daughter, the one engaged; only seventeen, with deep-grey, truthful eyes, a broad, grave face, dark hair, and a candour, by George! which had almost frightened him. And the little one, Katrina, blue-eyed, snub-nosed, fair-haired, with laughing lips, yet very serious too; charming little creature, whose death from typhoid three years later had given him quite a shock. Delightful family, seen through the mists of time. And now in all the world you couldn’t find a Russian family like that. Gone! Vanished from the face of the earth! Their estates had been--ah!--somewhere in South Russia, and a house near Yalta. Cosmopolitan, yet very Russian, with their _samovar_ and their _zakouskas_--a word he had never learned to spell--and Rostakov’s little glasses of white vodka, and those caviare sandwiches that the girls and he used to take on their picnics to Gorbio and Castellar and Belle Enda, riding donkeys, and chaperoned by that amiable young German lady, their governess.... Germans in those days--how different they were! How different the whole of life! The girls riding in their wide skirts, under parasols, the air unspoiled by the fumes of petrol, the carriages with their jangling-belled little horses and bright harness; priests in black; soldiers in bright trousers and yellow shakoes; and beggars--plenty. The girls would gather wild flowers and press them afterwards; and in the evening Varvara would look at him with her grave eyes and ask him whether he believed in a future life. He had no beliefs to speak of then, if he remembered rightly; they had come with increasing income, family, and business responsibilities. It had always seemed to hurt her that he thought of sport and dress, and not of his soul. The Russians in those days seemed so tremendously concerned about the soul--an excellent thing, of course, but not what one talked of. Still, that first fortnight had been quite idyllic. He remembered one Sunday afternoon--queer how such a little thing could stay in the mind!--on the beach near Cap Martin flicking sand off his boots with his handkerchief and Varvara saying: “And then to your face again, Philip Philipovitch?” She was always saying things which made him feel uncomfortable. And in the little letter which Katrina wrote him a year later, with blue forget-me-nots all about the paper, she had reminded him of how he had blushed. Charming young girls--simple--no such nowadays! The dew was off. They had thought Monte Carlo a vulgar place. What would they think of it now, by Jove! Even Rostakov only went there on the quiet--a _viveur_ that fellow, who would always be living a double life. Trevillian recollected how, under the spell of that idyllic atmosphere, and afraid of Varvara’s eyes, he himself had put off from day to day his visit to the celebrated haunt, until one evening when Madame Rostakov had _migraine_ and the girls were at a party he had sauntered to the station and embarked on a Monte Carlo train. How clearly it came back to him--the winding path up through the Gardens, a beautiful still evening, scented and warm, the Casino orchestra playing the Love music from ‘Faust,’ the one opera that he knew well. The darkness, strange with exotic foliage, glimmering with golden lamps--none of this glaring white electric light--had deeply impressed him, who, for all his youthful dandyism, had Puritanism in his blood and training. It was like going up to--well, not precisely heaven. And in his white beard old Trevillian uttered a slight cackle. Anyway, he had entered ‘the rooms’ with a beating heart. He had no money to throw away in those days; by Jove, no! His father had kept him strictly to an allowance of four hundred a year, and his partnership was still in the apprentice stage. He had only some ten or twenty pounds to spare. But to go back to England and have his fellows say, “What? Monte Carlo, and never played?” was not to be thought of.

His first sensation in ‘the rooms’ was disappointing. The decorations were florid, the people foreign, queer, ugly! For some time he stood still listening to the chink of rake against coin, and the nasal twang of the croupiers’ voices. Then he had gone up to a table to watch the game, which he had never played. That, at all events, was the same as now; that and the expression on the gamblers’ faces--the sharp, blind, crab-like absorption like no other human expression. And what a lot of old women! A nervous excitement had crept into his brain while he stood there, an itch into his fingers. But he was shy. All these people played with such deadly calm, seemed so utterly familiar with it all. At last he had reached over the shoulder of a dark-haired woman sitting in front of him, put down a five-franc piece, and called out the word ‘_Vingt_.’ A rake shovelled it forward on to the number with an indifferent click. The ball rolled. “_Quatorze, rouge pair et manque._” His five-franc piece was raked away. But he, Philip Trevillian, had gambled at Monte Carlo, and at once he had seemed to see Varvara’s eyes with something of amusement in their candour, and to hear her voice: “But to gamble! How silly, Philip Philipovitch!” Then the man sitting to his left got up, and he had slipped down into the empty chair. Once seated, he knew that he must play. So he pushed another five-franc piece on to black and received its counterpart. Now he was quits; and, continuing that simple stake with varying success, he began taking in the faces of his neighbours. On his left he had an old Englishman in evening dress, ruddy, with chubby lips, who played in gold pieces and seemed winning rather heavily. Opposite, in a fabulous shawl, a bird-like old woman, with a hook nose, and a man who looked like a Greek bandit in a frock-coat. To his right was the dark-haired woman over whose shoulder he had leaned. An agreeable perfume, as of jasmine blossoms, floated from her. She had some tablets and six or seven gold pieces before her, but seemed to have stopped playing. Out of the tail of his eye Trevillian scrutinised her profile. She was by far the most attractive woman he had seen in here. And he felt suddenly uninterested in the fate of his five-franc pieces. Under the thin, dark brows, a little drawn down, he could see that her eyes were dark and velvety. Her face was rather pointed, delicate, faintly powdered in the foreign fashion. She wore a low dress, but with a black lace scarf thrown over her gleaming shoulders, and something that glimmered in her dark hair. She was not English, but what he could not tell. He won twice running on black, left his stake untouched, and was conscious that she pushed one of her own gold pieces on to black. Again black won. Again he left his stake, and she hers. To be linked with her by that following of his luck was agreeable to young Trevillian. The devil might care--he would leave his winnings down. Again and again, till he had won eight times on black, he left his stake, and his neighbour followed suit. A pile of gold was mounting in front of each of them. The eyes of the hawk-like old woman opposite, like those of a crustacean in some book of natural history, seemed pushed out from her face; a little hard smile on her thin lips seemed saying, ‘Wait; it will all go back!’ The jasmine perfume from his neighbour grew stronger, as though disengaged by increasing emotion; he could see her white neck heave under its black lace. She reached her hand out as though to gather in her winnings. In bravado Trevillian sat unmoving. Her eyes slid round to his; she withdrew her hand. The little ball rolled. Black! He heard her sigh of relief. She touched his arm. “_Retirez!_” she whispered, “_Retirez, monsieur!_” and, sweeping in her winnings, she got up. Trevillian hesitated just a moment, then with the thought, ‘If I stay I lose sight of her,’ he, too, reached out, and, gathering in his pile, left the table. Starting with a five-franc piece, in nine successful coups he had won just over a hundred pounds. His neighbour, who had started with a louis, in seven coups--he calculated rapidly--must have won the same. “_Seize, rouge pair et manque!_” Just in time! Elated, Trevillian turned away. There was the graceful figure of his dark neighbour threading the throng, and without deliberate intention, yet longing not to lose sight of her, he followed. A check in her progress brought him so close, however, that he was at infinite pains to seem unconscious. She turned and saw him. “Ah! _Merci, monsieur!_ I tank you moch.” “It’s for me to thank you!” he stammered. The dark lady smiled. “I have the instinct,” she said in her broken English, “for others, not for myself. I am unlucky. It is the first time you play, sare? I tought so. Do not play again. Give me that promise; it will make me ’appy.”

Her eyes were looking into his. Never in his life had he seen anything so fascinating as her face with its slightly teasing smile, her figure in the lacy black dress swinging out Spanish fashion from the hips, and the scarf flung about her shoulders. He had made the speech then which afterwards seemed to him so foreign.

“Charmed to promise anything that will make you happy, madame.”

She clasped her hands like a pleased child.

“That is a bargain; now I have repaid you.”

“May I find your carriage?”

“I am walkin’, monsieur.”

With desperate courage he had murmured:

“Then may I escort you?”

“But certainly.”

Sitting on his prayer-book, Trevillian burrowed into the past. What had he felt, thought, fancied, in those moments while she had gone to get her cloak? Who and what was she? Into what whirlpool drawing him? How nearly he had bolted--back to the idyllic, to Varvara’s searching candour and Katrina’s laughing innocence, before she was there beside him, lace veiling her hair, face, eyes, like an Eastern woman, and her fingers had slipped under his sleeve.... What a walk! What sense of stepping into the unknown; strange intimacy and perfect ignorance! Perhaps every man had some such moment in his life--of pure romance, of adventuring at all and any cost. He had restrained the impulse to press that slender hand closely to his side, had struggled to preserve the perfect delicacy worthy of the touching confidence of so beautiful a lady. Italian, Spanish, Polish, Bohemian? Married, widowed? She told him nothing; he asked no questions. Instinct or shyness kept him dumb, but with a whirling brain. And the night above them had seemed the starriest ever seen, the sweetest scented, the most abandoned by all except himself and her. They had come to the gate of this very garden, and, opening it, she had said:

“Here is my home. You have been perfect for me, monsieur.”

Her lightly resting fingers were withdrawn. Trevillian remembered, with a sort of wonder, how he had kissed those fingers.

“I am always at your service, madame.”

Her lips had parted; her eyes had an arch sweetness he had never seen before or since in woman.

“Every night I play. _Au revoir!_”

He had listened to her footsteps on the path, watched lights go up in the house which looked so empty now behind him, watched them put out again, and, retracing his steps, had learned by heart their walk from the Casino, till he was sure he could not miss his way to that garden gate by day or night.... A fluster of breeze came into the jungle where he sat, and released the dry rustle of the palm-tree leaves. “_On fait des folies!_” as the French put it. Loose lot, the French! Queer what young men would go through when they were ‘making madnesses.’ And, plucking a bit of lilac, old Trevillian put it to his nose, as though seeking explanation for the madnesses of youth. What had he been like then? Thin as a lath, sunburnt--he used to pride himself on being sunburnt--a little black moustache, a dandy about clothes. The memory of his youthful looks warmed him, sitting there, chilly from old age....

“_On fait des folies!_” All next day he had been restless, uneasy, at the Villa Rosakov under the question in Varvara’s eyes, and Lord knew what excuse he had made for not going there that evening! Ah! And what of his solemn resolutions to find out all about his dark lady, not to run his head into some foreign noose, not to compromise her or himself? They had all gone out of his head the moment he set eyes on her again, and he had never learned anything but her name--Iñez--in all those three weeks, nor told anything of himself, as if both had felt that knowledge must destroy romance. When had he known himself of interest to her--the second night, the third? The look in her eyes! The pressure of her arm against his own! On this very seat, with his cloak spread to guard her from the chill, he had whispered his turbulent avowals. Not free! No such woman could be free. What did it matter? Disinheritance--ostracism--exile! All such considerations had burned like straws in the fire he had felt, sitting by her in the darkness, his arm about her, her shoulder pressed to his. With mournful mockery she had gazed at him, kissed his forehead, slipped away up the dark garden. God, what a night after that! Wandering up and down along by the sea--devoured. Funny to look back on--deuced funny! A woman’s face to have such power. And with a little shock he remembered that never in all the few weeks of that mad business had he seen her face by daylight! Of course, he had left Mentone at once--no offering his madness up to the candid eyes of those two girls, to the cynical stare of that old _viveur_ Rostakov. But no going home, though his leave was up; he was his own master yet awhile, thanks to his winnings. And then--the deluge. Literally--a night when the rain came down in torrents, drenching him through cape and clothes while he stood waiting for her. It was after that drenching night which had kept them apart that she had returned his passion.... A wild young devil! The madness of those nights beneath these trees by the old fountain! How he used to sit waiting on this bench in the darkness with heart fluttering, trembling, aching with expectancy!... Gad, how he had ached and fluttered on that seat! What fools young men could be! And yet in all his life had there been weeks so wildly sweet as those? Weeks the madness of which could stir in him still this strange youthful warmth. Rubbing his veined, thin hands together, he held them out into a streak of sunlight and closed his eyes.... There, coming through the gate into the deeper shadow, dark in her black dress--always black--the gleam of her neck when she bent and pressed his head to it! Through the rustling palm-leaves the extinct murmuring of their two voices, the beating of their two hearts.... Madness indeed! His back gave a little crick. He had been very free from lumbago lately. Confound it--a premonitory twinge! Close to his feet a lizard rustled out into the patch of sunlight, motionless but for tongue and eyes, looked at him with head to one side--queer, quick, dried-looking little object!... And then--the end! What a Jezebel of cruelty he had thought her! Now he could see its wisdom and its mercy. By George! She had blown their wild weeks out like a candle-flame! Vanished! Vanished into the unknown as she had come from the unknown; left him to go, haggard and burnt-up, back to England and bank routine, to the social and moral solidity of a pillar of society....

Like that lizard whisking its tail and vanishing beneath the dead dry leaves, so she had vanished--as if into the earth. Could she ever have felt for him as he for her? Did women ever know such consuming fires? Trevillian shrugged his thin shoulders. She had seemed to; but--how tell? Queer cattle--women!

Two nights he had sat here, waiting, sick with anxiety and longing. A third day he had watched outside the villa, closed, shuttered, abandoned; not a sound from it, not a living thing, but one white-and-yellow cat. He pitied himself even now, thinking of that last vigil. For three days more he had hung around, haunting Casino, garden, villa. No sign! No sign!...

Trevillian rose; his back had given him another twinge. He examined the seat and his open prayer-book. Had he overlapped it, on to damp stone? He frowned, smoothing superstitiously the pages a little creased and over-flattened by his weight. Closing the book, he went towards the gate. Had those passionate hours been the best or the worst of his life? He did not know.

He moved out into the hot sunshine and up the road. Round the corner he came suddenly abreast of the old villa. ‘It was here I stood,’ he thought; ‘just here!’ What was that caterwauling? Ah! The girl and the organ--there they were again! What! Why, of course! That long-ago morning a barrel organ had come while he stood there in despair. He could see it still, grinding away, with a monkey on it, and a woman singing that same silly tune. With a dry, dusty feeling he turned and walked on. What had he been thinking of before? Oh, ah! The Rolfe woman and that young fool Chesherford. Yes, he would certainly warn Agatha, certainly warn her. They were a loose lot out here!

1921.

BLACKMAIL