Part 8

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.