Part 15

Then Mr. Puce interrupted himself. He had to. It was so funny. He laughed. He heard himself laugh, and again it was quite delicious, the feeling that he was not frightened. And wouldn’t they laugh, the boys at the Booster Club back home, when he sprung this yarn on them! He could hear them. Oh, Boy! Say, listen, trying to scare him, Howard Cornelius Puce, with a ghost like that! Aw, it was like shooting craps with a guy that couldn’t count. Poor old Quillier! Never bet less than five hundred on anything, didn’t he, the poor boob! Well, there wasn’t a ghost made, with or without a head on him, that could put the wind up Howard Puce. No, sir!

For, as his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and helped by the mockery of light that the clouded, moonless night just managed to thrust through the distant window, the gentleman from America had been able to make out a form at the foot of the bed. He could only see its upper half, and that appeared to end above the throat. The phantom had no head. Whereas Julia’s head had been only half-severed from--Aw, what the hell!

“A family like the Kerr-Andersons,” began Mr. Puce, chuckling--but suddenly found, to his astonishment, that he was shouting at the top of his voice: anyhow, it sounded so. However, he began again, much lower, but still chuckling:

“Say, listen, Mr. Ghost, a family like the Kerr-Andersons might have afforded a head and a suit of clothes for their family ghost. Sir, you are one big bum phantom!” Again, unaccountably, Mr. Puce found himself shouting at the top of his voice. “I am going on counting,” he added grimly.

And, his automatic levelled at the thing’s heart, the gentleman from America went on counting. His voice was steady.

“Five ... six....”

He sat crouched at the head of the bed, his eyes never off the thing’s breast. Phantom nothing! He didn’t believe in that no-head bunk. What the hell! He thought of getting a little nearer the foot of the bed and catching the thing a whack on that invisible head of his, but decided to stay where he was.

“Seven ... eight....”

He hadn’t seen the hands before. Gee, some hands! And arms! Holy Moses, he’d got long arms to him, he had....

“Nine!” said the gentleman from America.

Christopher and Columbus, but this would make some tale back home! Yes, sir! Not a bad idea of Quillier’s, that, though! Those arms. Long as old glory ... long as the bed! Not bad for _Sir_ Cyril Quillier, that idea....

“Ten, you swine!” yelled the gentleman from America and fired.

Someone laughed. Mr. Puce quite distinctly heard himself laughing, and that made him laugh again. Fur goodness’ sake, what a shot! Missed from that distance!

His eyes, as he made to take aim again, were bothered by the drops of sweat from his forehead. “Aw, what the hell!” said Mr. Puce, and fired again.

The silence after the second shot was like a black cloud on the darkness. Mr. Puce thought out the wickedest word he knew, and said it. Well, he wasn’t going to miss again. No, sir! His hand was steady as iron, too. Iron was his second name. And again the gentleman from America found it quite delicious, the feeling that he was not frightened. Attaboy! The drops of sweat from his forehead bothered him, though. Aw, what the hell, that was only excitement.

He raised his arm for the third shot. Jupiter and Jane, but he’d learn that ghost to stop ghosting! He was certainly sorry for that ghost. He wished, though, that he could concentrate more on the actual body of the headless thing. There it was, darn it, at the foot of the bed, staring at him--well, it would have been staring at him if it had a head. Aw, of course it had a head! It was only Quillier with his lousy face in a black wrap. _Sir_ Cyril Quillier’d get one piece of lead in him this time, though. His own fault, the bastard.

“Say, listen, Quillier,” said the gentleman from America, “I want to tell you that unless you quit you are a corpse. Now I mean it, sure as my name is Howard Cornelius Puce. I have been shooting to miss so far. Yes, sir. But I am now _an_noyed. You get me, kid?”

If only, though, he could concentrate more on the body of the thing. His eyes kept wandering to the hands and arms. Gee, but they sure were long, those arms! As long as the bed, no less. Just long enough for the hands to get at him from the foot of the bed. And that’s what they were at, what’s more! Coming nearer. What the hell! They were moving, those doggone arms, nearer and nearer....

Mr. Puce fired again.

That was no miss. He knew that was no miss. Right through the heart, that little boy must have gone. In that darkness he couldn’t see more than just the shape of the thing. Aw, Goddammit! But it was still now. The arms were still. They weren’t moving any more. The gentleman from America chuckled. That one had shown him that it’s a wise little crack of a ghost that stops ghosting. Yes, sir! It certainly would fall in a moment, dead as Argentine mutton.

Mr. Puce then swore. Those arms were moving again. The hands weren’t a yard from him now. What the hell! They were for his throat, Goddammit.

“You swine!” sobbed the gentleman from America, and fired again. But he wouldn’t wait this time. No, sir! He’d let that ghost have a ton of lead. Mr. Puce fired again. Those hands weren’t half-a-yard from his throat now. No good shooting at the hands, though. Thing was to get the thing through the heart. Mr. Puce fired the sixth bullet. Right into the thing’s chest. The sweat bothered his eyes. “Aw, hell!” said Mr. Puce. He wished the bed was a bit longer. He couldn’t get back any more. Those arms.... Holy Moses; long as hell, weren’t they! Mr. Puce fired the seventh, eighth ... ninth. Right into the thing. The revolver fell from Mr. Puce’s shaking fingers. Mr. Puce heard himself screaming.

IV

Towards noon on a summer’s day several years later two men were sitting before an inn some miles from the ancient town of Lincoln. Drawn up in the shade of a towering ash was a large grey touring-car, covered with dust. On the worn table stood two tankards of ale. The travellers rested in silence and content, smoking.

The road by which the inn stood was really no more than a lane, and the peace of the motorists was not disturbed by the traffic of a main road. Indeed, the only human being visible was a distant speck on the dust, coming towards them. He seemed, however, to be making a good pace, for he soon drew near.

“If,” said the elder of the two men, in a low tired voice, “if we take the short cut through Carmion Wood, we will be at Malmanor for lunch.”

“Then you’ll go short-cutting alone,” said the other firmly. “I’ve heard enough tales about Carmion Wood to last me a lifetime without my adding one more to them. And as for spooks, one is enough for this child in one lifetime, thanks very much.”

The two men, for lack of any other distraction, watched the pedestrian draw near. He turned out to be a giant of a man; and had, apparently, no intention of resting at the inn. The very air of the tall pedestrian was a challenge to the lazy content of the sunlit noon. He was walking at a great pace, his felt hat swinging from his hand. A giant he was: his hair greying: his massive face set with assurance.

“By all that’s holy!” gasped the elder of the two observers. A little lean gentleman that was, with a lined face which had been handsome in a striking way but for the haggard marks of the dissipations of a man of the world. He had only one arm, and that added a curiously flippant air of devilry to his little, lean, sardonic person.

“Puce!” yelled the other, a young man with a chubby, good-humoured face. “Puce, you silly old ass! Come here at once!”

The giant swung round at the good-natured cry, stared at the two smiling men. Then the massive face broke into the old, genial smile by which his friends had always known and loved the gentleman from America, and he came towards them with hand outstretched.

“Well, boys!” laughed Mr. Puce. “This is one big surprise. But it’s good to see you again, I’ll say that.”

“The years have rolled on, Puce, the years have rolled on,” sighed Quillier in his tired way, but warmly enough he shook the gentleman from America with his one hand.

“They certainly have!” said Mr. Puce, mopping his brow and smiling down on the two. “And by the look of that arm, Quillier, I’ll say you’re no stranger to war.”

“Sit down, old Puce, and have a drink,” laughed Kerr-Anderson. Always gay, was Kerr-Anderson.

But the gentleman from America seemed, as he stood there, uncertain. He glanced down the way he had come. Quillier, watching him, saw that he was fagged out. Eleven years had made a great difference to Mr. Puce. He looked old, worn, a wreck of the hearty giant who was once Howard Cornelius Puce.

“Come, sit down, Puce,” he said kindly, and quite briskly, for him. “Do you realise, man, that it’s eleven years since that idiotic night? What are you doing? Taking a walking-tour?”

Mr. Puce sat down on the stained bench beside them. His massive presence, his massive smile, seemed to fill the whole air about the two men.

“Walking-tour? That is so, more or less,” smiled Mr. Puce; and, with a flash of his old humour: “I want to tell you boys that I am the daughter of the King of Egypt, but I am dressed as a man because I am travelling _incognito_. Eleven years is it, since we met? A whale of a time, eleven years!”

“Why, there’s been quite a war since then,” chuckled Kerr-Anderson. “But still that night seems like last night. I _am_ glad to see you again, old Puce! But, by Heaven, we owe you one for giving us the scare of our lives! Don’t we, Quillier?”

“That’s right, Puce,” smiled Quillier. “We owe you one all right. But I am heartily glad that it was only a shock you had, and that you were quite yourself after all. And so here we are gathered together again by blind chance, eleven years older, eleven years wiser. Have a drink, Puce?”

The gentleman from America was looking from one to the other of the two. The smile on the massive face seemed one of utter bewilderment. Quillier was shocked at the ravages of a mere eleven years on the man’s face.

“I gave you two a scare!” echoed Mr. Puce. “Aw, put it to music, boys! What the hell! How the blazes did I give you two a scare?”

Kerr-Anderson was quite delighted to explain. The scare of eleven years ago was part of the fun of to-day. Many a time he had told the tale to while away the boredom of Flanders and Mesopotamia, and had often wanted to let old Puce in on it to enjoy the joke on Quillier and himself but had never had the chance to get hold of him.

They had thought, that night, that Puce was dead. Quillier, naked from the waist up, had rushed down to Kerr-Anderson, waiting in the dark porch, and had told him that Puce had kicked the bucket. Quillier had sworn like nothing on earth as he dashed on his clothes. Awkward, Puce’s corpse, for Quillier and Kerr-Anderson. Quillier, thank Heaven, had had the sense not to leave the empty revolver on the bed. They shoved back all the ghost properties into a bag. And as, of course, the house wasn’t Kerr-Anderson’s aunt’s house at all, but Johnny Paramour’s, who was away, they couldn’t so easily be traced. Still, awkward for them, very. They cleared the country that night. Quillier swearing all the way about the weak hearts of giants. And it wasn’t until the Orient Express had pitched them out at Vienna that they saw in the Continental _Daily Mail_ that an American of the name of Puce had been found by the caretaker in the bedroom of a house in Grosvenor Square, suffering from shock and nervous breakdown. Poor old Puce! Good old Puce! But he’d had the laugh on them all right....

And heartily enough the gentleman from America appeared to enjoy the joke on Quillier and Kerr-Anderson.

“That’s good!” he laughed. “That’s very good!”

“Of course,” said Quillier in his tired, deprecating way, “we took the stake, this boy and I. For if you hadn’t collapsed you would certainly have run out of that room like a Mussulman from a ham-sandwich.”

“That’s all right,” laughed Mr. Puce. “But what I want to know, Quillier, is how you got me so scared?”

Kerr-Anderson says now that Puce was looking at Quillier quite amiably. Full in the face, and very close to him, but quite amiably. Quillier smiled, in his deprecating way.

“Oh, an old trick, Puce! A black rag over the head, a couple of yards of stuffed cloth for arms....”

“Aw, steady!” said Mr. Puce. But quite amiably. “Say, listen, I shot at you! Nine times. How about that?”

“Dear, oh, dear!” laughed Kerr-Anderson. But that was the last time he laughed that day.

“My dear Puce,” said Quillier gently, slightly waving his one arm. “That is the oldest trick of all. I was in a panic all the time that you would think of it and chuck the gun at my head. Those bullets in your automatic were blanks.”

Kerr-Anderson isn’t at all sure what exactly happened then. All he remembers is that Puce’s huge face had suddenly gone crimson, which made his hair stand out shockingly white; and that Puce had Quillier’s fragile throat between his hands; and that Puce was roaring and spitting into Quillier’s blackening face.

“Say, listen, you Quillier! You’d scare me like that, would you! You’d scare me with a chicken’s trick like that, would you! And you’d strangle me, eh? You swine, you _Sir_ Cyril Quillier you, right here’s where the strangling comes in, and it’s me that’s going to do it----”

Kerr-Anderson hit out and yelled. Quillier was helpless with his one arm, the giant’s grip on his throat. The woman who kept the inn had hysterics. Puce roared blasphemies. Quillier was doubled back over the small table, Puce on top of him, tightening his death-hold. Kerr-Anderson hit, kicked, bit, yelled.

Suddenly there were shouts from all around.

“For God’s sake, quick!” sobbed Kerr-Anderson. “He’s almost killed him.”

“Aw, what the hell!” roared Puce.

The men in dark uniforms had all they could do to drag him away from that little, lean, blackened, unconscious thing. Then they manacled Puce. Puce looked sheepish, and grinned at Kerr-Anderson.

Two of the six men in dark uniforms helped to revive Quillier.

“Drinks,” gasped Kerr-Anderson to the woman who kept the inn.

“Say, give me one,” begged the gentleman from America. Huge, helpless, manacled, he stood sheepishly among his uniformed captors. Kerr-Anderson stared at them. Quillier was reviving.

“Gets like that,” said the head warder indifferently. “Gave us the slip this morning. Certain death for someone. Homicidal maniac, that’s ’im. And he’s the devil to hold. Been like that eleven years. Got a shock, I fancy. Keeps on talking about a sister of his called Julia who was murdered and how he’ll be revenged for it....”

Kerr-Anderson had turned away. Quillier sobbed: “God have mercy on us!” The gentleman from America suddenly roared with laughter.

“Can’t be helped,” said the head warder. “Sorry you were put to trouble, sir. Good-day, gentlemen. Glad it was no worse.”

IX: TO LAMOIR

I

Alas, it is a pity I know so little of trees and flowers, and how I shall tell this tale without their help I cannot imagine, for it is a tale that demands a profound knowledge of still, gentle things. But I daresay it will get itself written somehow, and saying that leads us to quite another question, for serious men will have it that that is the pity of nearly all the writing of our time, it just gets itself written somehow.

Now it is difficult not to think a little of my own life in telling of Hugh and Lamoir, for they helped me when I was very young, for a long time they were my only friends in London, and ever since they have remained the dearest. But it was only the other day that Hugh told me about the tree. I suppose he must have had a sort of idea of what might happen and wanted to tell someone about it while he could. But it’s odd that I had known him all those years, him and Lamoir, and he had never so much as mentioned the tree--when out he suddenly comes with it!

Of course there will be those to say that he hadn’t concealed anything worth concealing, that it’s an impossible story anyhow, and who could believe it? But I do believe it decidedly, for how could Hugh have made it up? Hugh wasn’t an imaginative man, not a bit. That, in point of fact, is what the story is about. Of course, he had a passion for fine things, a passion for touching fine things, but your collector or your connoisseur isn’t generally anything of an imaginative man. Lamoir, now, she was quite different, and she might easily have thought of the garden and the tree and the whole business, but so far as I can make out Hugh and Lamoir never once breathed a word to each other about it.

I have never been able to think of Lamoir quite steadily, I liked her too much. I know a writer is supposed to be impersonal, but that can’t be helped. She knew the very hearts of trees and flowers, Lamoir did, and she was always so still and quiet, like a flower herself, that you never knew what she was thinking of. And that is more or less how the trouble between them began, so Hugh told me the other day. He never knew what she was thinking of, but he hoped for the best, and then one day he found that she had been thinking away from him all the time. That is what Hugh said. But I feel that the truth of it was that he never thought Lamoir was thinking of anything at all, except maybe about what a good husband he was, and then one day he got a shock. Many men seem to be like that, they have happy natures, for when their wives are quiet and thoughtful they never dream that those thoughts might be out of accord with their own, and when they do at last realise that something has been wrong all the time they are surprised and hurt and want to know why they were not told sooner. As though, you know, some things can be told sooner, as though some things _can_ be told until it is too late!

Now Hugh and Lamoir were a difficult pair to know, together or singly. Hugh wasn’t at all your democratic sort, there was nothing at all easy-going about him. I remember once seeing him in a crowded room and thinking he was like an island of nerves in an ocean of grins. Lamoir said he was proud. He simply didn’t seem to concern himself at all with other people’s opinions; it was as though he just hadn’t the time to go about dealing in the slack forms of geniality which pass for manners in this century. That is Hugh’s phrase, not mine. Lamoir left him about nine years ago.

They say that people made a great fuss over Lamoir when she first came from India, because she was so lovely. That must have been about twenty-five years ago, and about nine years ago she packed up a lot of trunks and went to Algeria. People were very surprised at that, for Lamoir was beloved of everyone, and she seemed to be liking her life in England--as much, anyhow, as anyone ever does seem to like his or her life in England, for there seems to be a feeling in people that one shouldn’t like living in England. I like it very much myself, but then I am not English. People said vaguely that she was going away because her heart was weak--quite all right, but weak, and that she must have quiet. She never came back.

I went to see her in Algeria two winters ago. I wanted very much just to see how she was in that solitary new life. Naturally I didn’t tell Hugh the main reason why I was going to Algeria, and I think he had an idea I was going there to try to write a book about it, one of those marvellous books about sheiks and sand and suburban Englishwomen with love flaming in their eyes to such a degree that none of their friends at home would ever recognise them. As Hugh never used to speak of his wife one had nothing to go on as to what his feelings about her were, and so, of course, one said nothing about her either.

Just the same, that is how I found Lamoir. She had the grace of silence, of reflection, to a rare degree. Some people found her frightfully dull, but then imagine what “some people” are, it can be said that their disapproval is a distinction that no fairly admirable person should ever be without. The house she was living in had been the palace of the last of the Admirals of the Dey’s fleet, Lamoir said, and one could well believe it. There were dungeons below, deep, dark, crooked, with chains and iron clamps on the walls where the poor devils of Christian slaves used to be kept, and on the morning Lamoir was showing me round there was a vampire-bat hanging asleep from the black broken walls. From the dungeons there was a secret passage, Lamoir said, down to the bay two miles away at the foot of the hill, and through this passage the old Admiral scoundrel had tried to escape when the French stormed the town about eighty years ago--or maybe it was more or less than eighty years ago; I don’t know when it was, and Lamoir didn’t know either.

One morning we were walking about on the pink tiles of the flat, uneven roof, not talking much, while below the sea slept. Lamoir asked after Hugh, just how he was, and I said he was quite well. “Lonely,” I added.

We sat on the parapet of the roof, looking down the hill at the white untidy town. There was an American liner in the bay, like a smudge. At last Lamoir said: “Yes, he was always lonely. Lonely and proud. Hugh is very proud. Don’t you think so?”

I said: “And you, Lamoir, aren’t you proud, too?”

You see, I knew nothing of the difficulty between Hugh and Lamoir. All I knew was that two dear friends of mine had parted from each other nine years before. Lamoir was looking towards the sea, she was smiling. Then she shook her head suddenly. Her hair was quite grey, and short, and curly--you can see how attractive Lamoir was, an autumnal flower.

“Oh, no!” she said. “_I’m_ not proud, not a bit. And I don’t like proud people.”

“I do!” I said.

She said gravely: “_You_ do, of course. But you are young, and it’s quite right that you should like proud people and should try to be proud yourself, though I should think your sense of humour would bother you a little while you were trying. I think young people should be proud, because if they are not they will put up with makeshifts and get dirty; but elderly people and old people should not be proud, because it prevents them from understanding anything.”

“But elderly people,” I said, “don’t they get dirty too, if they’re not proud?”

She laughed at me, and all she said was: “I was talking about nice elderly people.” And there the conversation ended, just nowhere. I think it very silly in a man to go generalising about women, but if I were to start generalising I might say that most abstract conversations between men end nowhere, but you have a feeling that at least something interesting has passed, while with a woman an abstract conversation ends nowhere and you have a feeling that she has only been talking about whatever it was just out of politeness.

I remember that what struck me most about Lamoir at that time was how happy she was, happy and feeling safe in her happiness. That puzzled me then, for I knew she loved Hugh.

II

I would see a good deal of Hugh, sometimes going to stay with him at Langton Weaver, and often, in London, dining with him at his house in Charles Street, just he and I alone. It was very pleasant to know of a quiet house in which I might now and then pass an evening talking, as one always did with Hugh if one talked at all, of books and tapestries and fine things. I never knew a man who had such a passion for the touch of fine things as Hugh, and seeing him thoughtfully holding a little old ivory figure in his hand one might almost think his skin was in love with it.