1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
A.E.W. Mason's 'They Wouldn't Be Chessmen' is a gripping novel that delves into the complexities of interpersonal relationships and moral dilemmas in a captivating literary style. Set in the early 20th century, the book explores themes of loyalty, honor, and duty through the intertwined lives of its characters, providing a thought-provoking narrative that keeps readers engaged until the very end. Mason's vivid descriptions and well-developed characters create a rich literary context that immerses the reader in the world of the story, offering a nuanced exploration of human nature and the consequences of difficult choices. A.E.W. Mason, known for his expertise in crafting compelling narratives with a focus on character development, draws on his own experiences and observations to infuse 'They Wouldn't Be Chessmen' with depth and authenticity. As a celebrated author in the early 20th century, Mason brings a unique perspective to this novel, weaving together elements of suspense, drama, and psychological insight to create a captivating reading experience. I highly recommend 'They Wouldn't Be Chessmen' to readers who enjoy thought-provoking literature that explores the complexities of human relationships and moral dilemmas. A.E.W. Mason's adept storytelling and engaging narrative make this novel a compelling and rewarding read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the human experience.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Ähnliche
They Wouldn't Be Chessmen
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I THE GATE CRASHER
A SMALL wizened man stood on the top step of the Prince Town Cinema and watched the raindrops bounce up from the pavement like steel beads. It was an afternoon late in January, and growing dark. The little man wore a suit of threadbare shoddy so much too big for him that it was drapery rather than clothes, and his rusty billycock hat would have hidden the bridge of his nose but for the protuberant flaps of his ears. The rain was tropical, a sheet of glistening filaments with the patter of innumerable small feet, and the cold had the raw creeping chill which eats the hope out of the heart. The little man shivered.
Behind and above him the lights in the Cinema Hall went out, when they should have gone on. Big men, bearded and moustached and clean-shaven, but all of them muscle and bone and trim with the trimness of disciplined officials, slipped on their mackintoshes and tramped off behind the screen of water. Not one of them had a word for the small scarecrow on the top of the steps. But the last of them, a burly giant, stopped to button the collar of his raincoat about his throat. The little man spoke with an insinuating whine.
"Mr. Langridge, sir, I don't know what I'm going to do for to-night."
All the good humour went out of Mr. Langridge's face. "You, Budden?" he answered grimly. "You do just what you like. You're a gentleman at large. You've the key of the street."
"Without the price of a fag," said Mr. Budden bitterly.
During the last few days the Prince Town Cinema had become a Court of Assize. A savage mutiny had broken out during November of the last year in the great convict prison up the road. The offices had been burned to a shell. An effort had been made to hang the Governor. This afternoon the long trial of the mutineers had come to an end, and of all of them just one had been acquitted—Mike Budden, the pitiable little man in the outsize clothes shivering on the top of the steps.
Nicholas Langridge, the big warder, reluctantly pulled a packet of Woodbines from his pocket.
"Here's one," he said.
"Thank you, Mr. Langridge," declared Budden. "I always said—"
"You're a liar," Langridge interrupted. "Here's a light."
"Thank you, Mr. Langridge."
Mike Budden took off his hat to shield the match from the rain, but he would have done better to have kept it on. Before, he had been little and squalid, a figure of fun for schoolboys and a reproach to men beyond their teens. But with his hat off he became definitely significant, and evil as a toad. He had a broad, flat and furrowed face, the colour of yellowish clay, and his bald head was seamed with red scars and the white lines of a surgeon's stitches. A pair of small, black, quick eyes were sunk deep between reddened eyelids, and he had the strong teeth of a rodent. In olden days he would have been matched against a rat with his hands tied behind his back, and he would have carried the big money.
Nicholas Langridge, however, was now too used to his face to be afflicted by it any more. He looked down at Mike Budden's clothes and laughed.
"They rigged you up proper at Exeter," he said.
Budden's sentence had expired when he was on remand for his share in the mutiny, and he had spent the intervening weeks in the prison at Exeter.
"Yus, they was cruel to me, Mr. Langridge," he whined. "Fairly sniggered at me in these old slops. Not English, you know, Mr. Langridge, no, not English. Now you, Mr. Langridge..."
"I'm a foreigner too," said Langridge drily. "Why, you old rascal, you ought to go down on your knees in a puddle and thank 'em all at Exeter for their kindness. You had your head shaved, too, I see, so as you could pretend all those old scars were Christmas presents from us. What with the cheek of that lie and your age and your concertina trousers, you made the jury laugh so that they hadn't got enough breath left to convict you. Fairly put it over them, didn't you?"
Mike Budden grinned for a moment and then thrust out his under-lip.
"I overdone it, Mr. Langridge, sir. That's the truth."
"Overdone it?" the warder cried sharply. "What do you mean by that?"
Mike Budden turned a blank face and a pair of expressionless eyes upon the warder. For half a minute he stood silent. Then he answered in an even, white voice which matched the vacancy of his face:
"What I mean, Mr. Langridge—look at that there rain. Torrentuous, I call it. It's all very well for you, but I ain't used to it, am I?"
And Mike was right. Nearer to seventy years of age than sixty, he had spent nearer to forty of them than thirty in the dry retirement of his country's prisons. Langridge the warder might tramp backwards and forwards between his cottage and the gaol in weather torrentuous or otherwise. Mike Budden kept his feet dry.
"Well, I can't help you," said Langridge abruptly, and shouldering the curtain of rain aside, he swung off down the steps. The lights in the Hall windows were by now extinguished, the hammering had ceased, the makeshift Court of Assize was dismantled, and finally the one big lamp above the entrance and the steps went out with a startling suddenness There was now darkness, the unchanging roar of the rain, and one little old shivering scarecrow on the top of a steep flight of steps.
Mike Budden made a small whimpering noise. Within his limits he was a very good actor. He had just twopence in his pocket. He could not make a dash for the inn. No house, however mean, in this small town of the Moor, would offer him a shelter for the night. Very well, then, there was nothing for it but the old home. Mike ran down the steps and sidled along the walls of the cottages up the road. Here and there a lighted window and the leaping glow of a fire spoke of comfort and warmth. Mike's boots let in the water. Mike's clothes became a pudding; the cottages came abruptly to an end. There were big trees now along the left-hand side of the open road, ghostly, whispering, unpleasant things. Budden took to the middle of the road. Beyond a bend on the left-hand side once more lights shone from windows. The Doctor's house. A little farther along, more lights. The Governor's house, and on the far side of the Governor's house towards the stone arch, the iron gates of the old homestead.
Budden rang the great bell and sent the rooks in the high trees opposite scurrying about the sky. A warder came forward and flashed a light upon the bedraggled Peri at the Gates.
"Here, what do you want?" he cried in an outraged voice. "Buzz off!"
As he turned away, Mike clung to the bars and screamed:
"You can't treat me like that, mister. I'm Mike Budden, I am. Number 8-0-3. You remember me. You can't leave me out here all night."
The warder turned again swiftly, and lifted and lowered his lamp until he had taken in every detail of the sopping horror in front of him.
"Mike Budden!" he said at length, with a soft note of satisfaction in his voice. It could be felt that behind the lamp the warder's face was smiling. Undoubtedly Mike was not popular on Dartmoor. "Mike Budden! So it is. But your room's engaged, Mike. You ought to have sent us a wire. Why not try the Ritz? Buzz off!"
Mike couldn't buzz, but his teeth could chatter; and they chattered now like a man with the ague. He was an excellent actor, considering his inexperience.
"I'll die here, mister. I will," he whined. "Right in front of the prison. I'll be found here in the morning—dead. Think of it, mister!" The warder seemed to be thinking of it with equanimity. "It'll be in all the papers. 'In-umanities at Dartmoor.' Questions too in Parlemink!" And thus Mike Budden hit the right nail truly and well.
If there is one thing which a Government official loathes and dreads more than another, it's a Question in Parlemink. He may be a great man with an Office to himself on St. James's Park, or he may be the porter of a convict prison. Social status makes no difference. To one and all a Question in Parlemink is the world's great abomination. The Porter at the Gate took another look at Mike Budden. He certainly might die in the night if he was left out till morning. An end desirable anywhere else than at the front door of Dartmoor Prison. For Mike was a really bad old lag. Ill-conditioned and sly, with an exact knowledge of his rights and liabilities, he gave just as much trouble as within the regulations he possibly could; and that was a great deal. He was the sea-lawyer of lags. But he must not be allowed to criticise the Institution by finding a watery grave in front of its doors.
"I'll go and see the Chief Warder. You wait here!" said the porter.
Mr. Budden raised his flat face towards the pouring heavens.
"God bless you, mister," he said in fervent tones.
Unfortunately the words carried. The porter could stand much, but his stomach turned at the invocation. He came grimly back to the rails.
"You can take back that patter, Mike! If you don't know me, I know you," he said slowly and unemotionally. "You darned old gorilla-faced hypocrite! If I can't get the blessing of God without your agency, I'm better off in all my sins."
"I'm perishing, mister," said Mike.
"Take it back, Mike. I'm getting wet," said the porter remorselessly.
Mr. Budden realised that the time and the weather were unsuitable for a theological discussion. He capitulated hurriedly.
"I'm not fit to call down a blessing on any man. I knows that, mister. It was a manner of speaking..." he whined, and the porter cut him short.
"You make me sick," he said simply, and he went across the outer square, leaving the Governor's house upon his right, to the lodge at the inner gates. The door of the lodge stood open upon a lighted room with a fine coal fire blazing cheerfully upon the hearth. At a desk in that room sat the Chief Warder, and he looked up with surprise.
"Hallo, Williams!"
Williams jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
"We've got one of them gate crashers out there," he said.
"Know him?" asked the Chief Warder.
Williams's face registered gloom.
"Mike Budden."
"Well! Of all the infernal cheek! What does he want?"
"A night's lodging, sir."
Words failed the Chief Warder. There was no doubt that Mike was unpopular. Nobody liked him, not even his fellow-convicts. He would never get into P.O.P., however long he served.
"Tell him to buzz off," said the Chief Warder.
"I used them very words, sir," said Williams.
"And there wasn't a buzz, eh?"
Williams shook his head.
"I think he'll die if we leave him out there."
"He might, just to make things uncomfortable for us," the Chief Warder agreed.
He tilted his cap on one side and scratched his head. That would not do. There was the credit of the establishment to be considered, the good name of the school.
"The Doctor's in the surgery. I'll go along and see him."
The Chief Warder tightened his belt and went off upon his errand. And that night Mike Budden slept in the prison infirmary.
The rain had cleared off by the morning and the sky was blue. The prison provided Mike Budden with a less unseemly suit of clothes and a breakfast; which he took by himself in the little mess-room which would be used later in the day by the good-conduct prisoners with the stripes down their trousers, for smoking and conversation. There Dr. Holt found him. Mike tried an ingratiating smile on the Doctor, but it had no success. Dr. Holt stroked his brown beard, eyed him coldly, and asked:
"Where are you going to from here, Budden?"
"Tavistock, sir. I've got friends there who'll be glad to see me," said Budden.
"They must be an odd lot," the Doctor remarked offensively. "How do you mean to go? You've only got tuppence."
"I'll walk a bit, sir, and then like as not I'll get a lift."
Dr. Holt counted out six half-crowns from his pocket. "Here are two from the Governor, two from the Chaplain, and two from myself, and we can ill afford them. We don't give them to you because you're old, or because a harsh first sentence poisoned your early youth, or because we like you. We don't like you, Budden, we never have liked you, and we never shall like you. We know you to be a treacherous, cunning little malingering liar, and we make you this present in the hope that the next time you're jugged it'll be in Scotland and you'll be sent to Peterhead. We don't want you on Dartmoor any more."
Mike Budden grabbed up the six half-crowns and touched his forehead.
"You won't see me any more, Doctor," he said humbly. "I've made my mistakes, I know. But I've had my lesson and I'm going straight from now on."
The Doctor grunted.
"Just as straight as a jack-snipe flies," he said unpleasantly.
But field sports and the ways of wild birds had played no substantial part in the education of Mike Budden; though they had in another member of the Dartmoor fellowship with whom this history is connected.
"You will catch the omnibus to Tavistock which passes our gates at eight o'clock this morning," the Doctor continued.
"I will, sir," said Mike.
"You certainly will," said the Doctor; and carefully shepherded by a warder, so that not by any chance could he exchange a word with a prisoner, Mike Budden certainly did.
II
But Dr. Holt had not seen the last of Mike Budden that day. He drove to Plymouth in his small car during the afternoon to meet a young cousin, Oliver Ransom, who was returning from India. Ransom, an officer of promise in the Bengal Police, had been dangerously wounded in a riot at Chandernagore, and at the age of twenty-eight had been invalided out of his service. Holt saw a tall young man with fair hair and a face still thin from a long illness, in the Customs House, under the letter R, and went up to him.
"Oliver Ransom?"
"Yes."
"You'll stay with me for a little while, won't you?"
"Thank you! I shall be glad. I'm at a loose end for the moment."
The two men shook hands. Ransom's heavy luggage was going forward by sea to London. There were only the cabin trunks to be passed and strapped on to the car. On the way up from the quay Dr. Holt stopped the car at the North Road Station.
"You sit here," he said to Ransom. "I shan't be a moment."
The advice was undoubtedly sound from the Doctor's professional view, but it none the less was the most terrible catastrophe for Oliver Ransom. For he followed the advice and continued to sit in the car whilst Holt went on to the departure platform.
The prison Doctor, though of a bluff and stolid appearance, was very secretly and rather ashamedly a romantic. A solitary person, with his lot cast in a disheartening place, he would people his quarters on gloomy evenings with gay and charming visions of fine adventure. He climbed Everests, he sailed single-handed through tropical archipelagos, he flew high over infinite deserts, he dined with exquisite women in the restaurants of Monte Carlo. But since he had actually seen nothing of any one of these Elysia, he had to get the picture papers to help him out. He made straight for the bookstall and bought a bundle of them; and whilst he was waiting for them to be tied up in a roll, he saw out of the tail of his eye Mike Budden slip furtively out of the refreshment-room, in a good suit of clothes, with a suit-case in his hand and a cigar, a big fat cigar, stuck in the corner of his mouth.
The London train had just drawn up in the station. Mike nipped into an empty third-class compartment, settled himself in a corner, and lit his cigar. Holt, with his picture papers under his arm, strolled across to the compartment, very much to Mike's annoyance. Dr. Holt had really no wish to bait the little man. He was only anxious to assure himself that he was going as far away as the remainder of his fifteen shillings, plus the contributions of the odd friends at Tavistock, would carry him. But his manner of address was unfortunate.
"Quite the little gentleman, Mike, I see."
And anything less gentlemanly than Mike's reception of his remark even Dartmoor could hardly have supplied. Budden for a second lost his poise. The one expressive short word which he used was the least offensive part of his behaviour. His head darted forwards as if he was about to strike with it, the tip of his tongue shot out beyond his lips and curled upwards and about them, as though it had an independent life of its own, a prolonged low hiss escaped between his bared, strong teeth. He was in a second no longer the old humble, whining lag, but a small brute, malignant as an adder and as dangerous. The change was so startling, the look of the little man so beyond Nature and horrible, that the Doctor stepped back with an unpleasant queasiness in the pit of his stomach. Men couldn't be like that, he felt, couldn't so spread about them an aura of abomination. Mike Budden became important through the very excess of his ferocity. But the revelation was gone the next moment, the face wiped clean of cruelty, the shoulders cringing.
"You can't grudge me a smoke, Doctor," he whined reproachfully. "All these weeks in Exeter Gaol, an innocent man, sir, proved innocent by word of jury, and not one pull at a fag. Disgraceful, I call it. What I says is, what's Parlemink doing? Here, Doctor," and as the bright idea occurred to Mike he gazed upon Holt with admiration, "you're wasting your time, dosin' a measly lot of convicts at Dartmoor. You're the man to go into Parlemink and see that innocent old boys like me aren't grudged a tuppeny smoke."
"Before I called that a tuppeny smoke, Budden, I should take the nice gold band off its middle," said Holt drily; and an inspector with his clip came up to the door.
"Tickets, please!"
Mr. Budden fumbled in his pocket.
"Good-bye, Doctor," he said, "and thank you very much"; and the Doctor didn't move.
"Tickets, please," the Inspector repeated, and very reluctantly Budden produced his ticket.
"London," said the Inspector, as he clipped it and passed on.
"Ah! London's a good way, Mike," said Dr. Holt. "Got anything to read?"
"I've got me thoughts," said Mike Budden darkly, and the train slid quietly out of the station.
III
Holt's satisfaction that Mike Budden was travelling a very long way did not last. He found himself suddenly very hot under the collar. The price of a third-class ticket to London was twenty-eight shillings and twopence. He knew it, and so did the Chaplain, and so did the Governor; for that was the only class which they could afford. And he had squeezed five shillings out of each of them with the idea of setting on his feet a dangerous little viper who could buy himself a suit-case, and a ticket to London, to say nothing of a Havana cigar. Dr. Holt was justifiably angry, but he was uneasy too; and as he drove Ransom up on to the Moor he became more uneasy than angry. So uneasy, indeed, that as he opened his house door he said to Ransom:
"Will you tell the servant to carry your traps up to your room? You might take in that bundle of papers, too. I think I ought to say a word or two to the Governor."
He ran across to the house at the corner of the outer courtyard and found the Governor, in knickerbockers, taking his tea with his family. He was offered a cup, and excused himself on the grounds of his guest.
"But I did want to see you, Major, if I could, for a minute."
Major Burrows, the Governor, rose at once. He was a broad-shouldered, practical soldier, without theories or illusions, but he was just and prompt, and under him quiet now reigned over the prison. He took Dr. Holt into his study, looking out upon the road.
"I've got to apologise to you and to the Chaplain, sir," said Holt. "That little rascal Budden fairly put it over me last night, just as he put it over that pie-faced jury. He had money to burn waiting for him at Tavistock."
Major Burrows silently offered Holt a box of cigarettes.
"I'm a little uneasy myself," he confessed. "He had only tuppence in his pocket and a slop suit last night, and now he's off to London, you say, all dressed up, with a Havana cigar. I don't like it."
The Doctor nodded his head. He had an unpleasantly vivid recollection of that venomous old face striking at him from the window of the railway carriage.
"I ought to have left the little rascal out in the rain," he said remorsefully. But Major Burrows pushed the apology away with a sweep of the hand.
"You couldn't have done it, Holt. No one could have done anything but what you did. But I'm a bit worried, all the same. Langridge was chaffing him after the trial was over on his get-up and his defence. And what do you think he said? 'I overdone it, Mr. Langridge, and that's the truth.' It struck Langridge as a queer sort of remark, and he reported it to me...And I, too, think it queer. I think Budden expected a light sentence. He couldn't have got a heavy one, for he didn't do much more than encourage the others. But he might have got a light one, and I shouldn't wonder if he was prepared to take a light one."
"You mean that he wanted to get back into the prison?"
"I shouldn't wonder," said the Governor. "My belief is that he had got something rather special to say to one of the convicts who's coming out pretty soon."
Dr. Holt sat down in a chair.
"Oh, I see! Yes, he did get in, and he was in funds this afternoon."
The Governor leaned his elbows on his writing-table. "Let's see now! Budden spoke to Langridge, to the porter at the gate, to the Chief Warder, to you, and to the hospital orderly. Where did he sleep?"
"In A Ward, the big one. None of the hospital cells were available. I put him next to the door."
"Who was on the other side of him?" asked Burrows.
"Garrow, the forger. He has got six years of his sentence still to run."
"Well, he's not the man, then, but he'd pass on a message, of course."
"I gave orders that Budden shouldn't be allowed to talk," said Holt rather miserably, "and the orderly tells me that he didn't."
The Governor grunted and shrugged his shoulders.
"Yes, but—any old lag can put it over us at that game. You wouldn't hear a whisper, but he'd have said his piece all the same."
Major Burrows thumped gently on his blotting pad with his ruler.
"I got on to Exeter," he continued, "after Langridge had reported, to find out who visited Mike Budden whilst he was on remand there. Only his brother, and his brother only once. But once was enough, no doubt. We might try and find out, perhaps, if they could discover in Tavistock whom Budden went to see."
Major Burrows rang up the Police Headquarters at Tavistock on the telephone and asked for a report. But Tavistock had no message of consolation. A police constable had seen someone fitting the description of Mike Budden descend from the motor omnibus in the Market Square. But Mike had disappeared thereafter. Discreet enquiries were made in London of the brother who had visited Mike in Exeter Gaol. He was a cobbler on Hornsey Rise, and had never himself been in the hands of the Police at all. He frankly and entirely disapproved of his brother, and lamented his wasted life. Why, then, had he travelled such a long way to Exeter to see him?
"'Umanity," said Arthur Budden, the cobbler. "'Umanity, sir, makes even brothers kin."
"'Umanity," was clearly the king word of the Budden family. Major Burrows, in a phrase, had reached two dead ends; and gradually the exacting duties of his post washed the whole affair out of his mind.
IV
Dr. Holt crossed the road again to his house at the edge of the wood, to find that Oliver Ransom had driven the car into the garage and was now changing his clothes for dinner. Holt knocked upon his door, and having been told to come in, looked round the room.
"There's no woman to superintend this house, Oliver, so if you miss anything you must shout for it. Meanwhile, I'd like to have a look at that wound of yours."
It was a clean enough shot, but it had grazed the left lung and drilled a hole through the shoulder.
"Lucky for you it wasn't an explosive bullet. You'll be all right in a month or two," Dr. Holt decided. "But once your lung has been touched up, even when it's healed, I should think you are better out of that climate. You must tell me after dinner what you think of doing."
After dinner the two men sat one on each side of a blazing fire in the Doctor's comfortable book-lined library, and over their cigars, Dr. Holt's one great luxury, Oliver Ransom spoke quietly of his plans.
"I shall read for the Bar. Of course I am old for it. Twenty-eight. But others have passed as late, I think, and succeeded."
The Doctor looked at his cousin, and was doubtful about that plan. Others at his age—yes. But Oliver Ransom—that was another matter. Push would be wanted, not reserve. More of the buffalo, a delicacy less fastidious than this young man with the face of a scholar looked like possessing. He would have to trample. Could he?
"And meanwhile?" Holt asked. "You can wait till you are called?"
Oliver shook his head.
"Not altogether. I have a gratuity and a pittance. But I thought that I might get perhaps some private enquiry work to help me through."
For a moment Dr. Holt was astonished. Then he realised that his astonishment was due to the grace of Ransom's appearance. But a slim figure and a thoughtful face were not trustworthy standards. These were to be found behind the big gates across the road. One instance in particular rose very vividly at that moment before the Doctor's eyes—George Brymer, serving now his second sentence for blackmail.
"An enquiry agent! I hadn't thought of that!"
Oliver Ransom laughed.
"I don't mean, of course, to follow adulterous couples on a bicycle, but there are other cases, aren't there? I managed, you know, to bring off one or two jobs that weren't perhaps so very easy whilst I was in India."
Dr. Holt felt inclined to stamp with annoyance.
"One or two jobs that weren't so very easy." That wouldn't do. That wasn't the modern way. You must cry your wares now and be sure to buy a megaphone to do it with. A job or two not so easy! Who would pay any attention to that? Why, it was a disclaimer, or next door to it. Something quite different was needed. "I solved the appalling mystery of Chandernagore, and don't you forget it!" Or: "They worked at it for a year before I was called in. Then, old man, the murderer was inside next day." Diffidence and modesty had no share values and the sooner Oliver Ransom learned it the better.
"We'll talk it over again," said the Doctor.
"Right," said Oliver Ransom, and he opened one of the picture papers on his knees.
But Holt had a worrying mind. Of course if Oliver found an incentive, a big special whale of an incentive! If he fell head over heels irrecoverably in love, for instance! The grand passion they write about! That might turn him into the buccaneer he had somehow got to be. If he had a touch of George Brymer, for instance, the look of him, the easy way and cheek of him, the odd attraction he, a cold devil himself, had for women and animals and even birds.
"I'll tell you about Brymer," Dr. Holt said. "He's hopeless, no doubt. He'll come back here again and again. There's nothing really to like in him. He wouldn't, I believe, hesitate before the most heartless murder you can imagine. Yet there are women, who ought to know better, always wanting to see him, and he has only got to go out on to one of the fields of our farm here and stretch out his arms, and every bird in the neighbourhood will fly down and settle on his shoulders and hands and strut about all over him as if he was St. Francis of Assisi. A touch of the buccaneer! Not enough to plant you down in Dartmoor, but just a touch of it, what? Not you nor I could get a single bird to come and say how do you do to us! Yet Brymer—odd, eh? And girls, too! Brymer."
It was the only time Dr. Holt ever mentioned Brymer to his cousin, and he certainly never showed that convict to him. But a touch of Brymer, eh? The bird side, the woman side. It probably went with brutality, however. Dr. Holt ran over the names of the damsels in the neighbourhood who might be suitable, and bring suitable patrimonies to Oliver Ransom, but he could not select one. However, there was time.
"You'll stay for a week or so, won't you?" said Holt.
"Thank you," Oliver Ransom answered, a little absently. He had been gazing at the same page in the Tatler all through the Doctor's reflections. Now he handed the paper across to his companion.
"Rather lovely, eh?" he said with a smile.
Dr. Holt looked at a photograph of a moonlit water between tropical islands. A slim, tall and beautiful girl was aquaplaning behind a motor launch, her face radiant with pleasure, her hair streaming back from her face in the wind of her going. She was wearing a white satin evening dancing-frock, which just fell to her feet, and the water frothed and glistened about her white satin shoes, and tumbled away in the wake like snow. Underneath the photo group ran the legend:
Lydia Flight, the young mezzo-soprano of the Metropolitan Opera House, aquaplaning at Nassau after a ball at the Porcupine Club.
Dr. Holt laughed aloud. Here was the very text which he wanted.
"Yes, she's lovely, and a lesson to you, Oliver. No hiding her light under a bushel, eh? That's real publicity. Worth a thousand interviews. I give her top marks. That girl must have brains as well as looks."
The photograph showed her brimful of youth. She balanced herself upon her board, her lithe body leaning back, and her lovely face turned upwards to the moonlit skies, as though she meant to take all the warm-scented breath of that night into her lungs. She was not wearing the customary mirthless, suitable smile with which the ladies of screen or stage consciously face a camera. She had been caught in such an abandonment of pleasure that some of her delight must pass on even to those who only shared it through the medium of a photograph.
"Yes," said Dr. Holt the romantic, "we owe her something for existing."
He was contrasting her with his loathsome little gate crasher of this morning, Mike Budden. She was tall as Rosalind, supple and sweet as Nausicaa upon her beach of the Aegean. Oliver Ransom had the same thought, but he expressed it with a greater moderation.
Neither of them looked for news of her in the letterpress. Neither of them, in consequence, understood why, with the opera season hardly yet at its height, she had turned her back on New York.
CHAPTER II BRASS RAGS
SPRING came early to Europe that year, and to Paris a little earlier than to most cities. On an evening of March a window in an apartment of the Avenue Matignon stood wide open on the gardens of the Champs-Élysées. A fire burned upon the hearth, more for the intimate look and comfort of it than from any need of its heat. The air was warm outside with a scent of flowers, and the rumble of traffic in the Champs-Élysées and the distant streets had here a pleasant rhythm. But the two young people in this dainty drawing-room with the pale grey panels were insensible to the balm of the night and the murmur of the roads. They sat on high chairs at a round table under the crystal chandelier and with frowning and concentrated faces they put together a jig-saw puzzle of the Battle of Waterloo. It was close upon midnight, and the work was almost done. A few tortured pieces of coloured wood alone refused malignantly to be fitted into their places.
Of the two seated at the table, one was a young Indian of twenty-one years, small and slender and smartly buttoned up in a double-breasted dinner jacket. His colour was a pale brown; he had sleek black hair, and melting eyes; he was very good-looking, and he had the easy carriage of a youth trained in the gymnasium and on the polo ground. He was the eldest son and the heir of the Maharajah of Chitipur, in Northern India, and was on his first visit to Europe.
His companion was a girl older by some six years than he, and pretty with the smoothness of youth. Her hair had the fashionable tint of platinum, she had a wide mouth, a pair of big blue eyes, almost too innocent to be true, cheeks, chubby now but definitely fat in ten years' time, and a stubborn little chin against which all the intelligence in the world would break in vain.
"This is the loveliest evening we have ever had, Elsie," the boy whispered, slipping his arm round her shoulders.
"Yes, darling," she answered inattentively, as she picked up a squiggly fragment of the puzzle from the table and tried to insert it where it wouldn't go. "Damn!" she said. "Do you know, Natty, I think I'd like a brandy and soda."
Nahendra Nao were his names. He rose, and crossing behind her to a small table in the corner, mixed her drink. From where he stood he could see her head bent forward over the table, the platinum tendrils on the nape of her neck, the shoulders snow-white and satin-smooth.
"It's marvellous, Elsie," he cried. "I never get used to it. There you are, with all Paris running after you—Paris, just think of it!" And for a moment he raised his eyes from the girl to look out through the window and the balmy night on the lights of the City of Enchantment The murmur of the streets was music to this youth from a sleeping palace, where most of every day was Sunday afternoon. He held his breath to listen. Beyond the gardens and the houses the loom of the lamps in the Place de la Concorde made daylight of the upper air. Paris! "Six weeks ago I had never seen it," the boy continued. "I had never lived, and then I cut right through all your beaux and adorers, and carried you off, didn't I?"
"Yes, darling," said Elsie, and she took up another sliver of the puzzle. "I wonder whether this'll go?"
"Young Lochinvar, eh?" the boy asked, with a rather shrill, high laugh.
It was true enough that Elsie Marsh of the Casino de Paris had a large wake of followers. She was pretty, but not outstandingly pretty. She had lovely movements when she danced, and long slim legs free from the hips, but others could match her. She sang, but with a poor little scrannel voice which stopped at the fourth row of the stalls. But these things, qualities and faults, did not matter. She made an appeal to the passions which was indefinable but manifest. She came across the footlights instantly, kindling the blood and waking desire. She had something which other women had not. It was not charm—that is too cold and polite a word. It was a vital, stinging appeal to the animal in men, and it carried somehow an assurance that the response would be fierce too.
"But I think this evening is perfect, don't you, Elsie?" he went on.
The Casino de Paris had been shut for a week whilst a new revue was being staged. For Elsie Marsh and Nahendra Nao it had been a hectic week of expeditions into the country, large meals at crowded tables, and noisy parties ending with the dawn. On this one night at the end of the week they had dined together alone, in the charming apartment he had taken for her—a domesticated couple engrossed in the simple pleasure of a jig-saw puzzle.
"Perfect, dear," said Elsie. "What about my drink?"
The Prince carried it to her, and sitting down, drew her close to him.
"To-night has made such a difference, hasn't it?" he said in a low and pleading voice. "We've been happy, haven't we? Just you and I together. Don't you think"—and his voice now took on a still more urgent note, and Elsie's face looked up warily from the puzzle towards the window—"don't you think that somehow it could all keep going on for good?"
"No!" Elsie spoke just a little sharply.
"I believe it could. I mean—now that I know—to come back often." There was a hardly noticeable intake of his breath as he had a glimpse of his father the Maharajah preparing to say a word or two about that proposition. Not too easy a man, the Maharajah! But he was a long way off just now, and the boy was twenty-one, and proudly in love with his lady of the halls. "Every year, if I can. And perhaps, afterwards..."
But Elsie Marsh took a sip at her brandy and soda, and shook her stubborn little chin.
"It'd be marvellous if it were possible, but it isn't, Natty. We must just get what we can out of the present." It was Elsie's creed, and she was certainly putting it into full practice these days. She turned towards him, and rubbed her cheek against his. "It'll have to be for both of us just a lovely dream."
Her voice yearned; she knew her words in this part, and exactly how they should be spoken. But this once she spoke them too well. Nahendra Nao, with his eyes full of tears, bent his head down and kissed her throat—and then did not for a little while lift his head again. He remained in that awkward position, very still. Elsie would have thought that he had fainted but for his arm thrown about her shoulders and the clasp of his hand. That tightened and tightened, and in Elsie's eyes a spark of fear suddenly shone, and she shivered. Some day, of course, he would have to find out, sooner or later, but the later the better—and not on a night like this—when they were alone...Of course, he was only a boy, but boys could be dangerous, and one never knew. There were her maid and dresser at the end of the passage—the cook, too, next door to her. But wouldn't they just put their heads under the bed-clothes—if they heard anything—a scream, for instance?
Elsie swallowed once or twice. How long was he going to stay in this ridiculous attitude? She knew how to deal with men—the ordinary men, stuffed with money and high living, amongst whom she lived—no one better. But this boy from the East?...And suddenly Nahendra Nao stood up erect. For a few moments he slipped back through a century or two to an older tradition. Swiftly and deftly, with hands as slender as a woman's, he lifted from Elsie Marsh's shoulders a long rope of enormous pearls which was coiled three times about her throat and even then swung to below her knees. He ran it across the palm of his hand. He stooped to spread it out upon the table; and the cuff of his coat caught the frame of the jig-saw puzzle and upset it, Wellington and his guns, and Napoleon and the Old Guard, in a rattling heap upon the floor. The accident roused Elsie into a fury.
"How dare you do that?" she screamed suddenly. "I had almost finished it!"
"Look!" he said. "Look!" And he spread out the rope of pearls upon the table.
He was not now so much angry as aghast. The pearls had lost their lustre and purity. They were dull, yellowish beads, and here and there mottled and stained.
"My God!" he said, more to himself than to her. "I'm ruined! I daren't go back!"
His face had taken on a greenish tinge which took all his good looks away. He was face to face with a disaster for which there was no cure. At last he turned to Elsie Marsh.
"Why didn't you tell me that you couldn't wear them? Some people can't—that's known. You must have known it for a long while. There might have been time to save them."
"Of course I can wear them," she cried angrily, and she added with a sneer: "if they're real. But those aren't! They're just beads—lousy beads. You thought you were doing a clever thing when you lent a poor girl a lot of rocks on a string and told her they were the family pearls. But you didn't take me in—not for an instant you didn't!"
She was lying. Nahendra Nao was recollecting. "You knew very well," he said.
"I didn't. I didn't. I don't," she shouted, her fist beating on the table, her face red. No woman likes to be told that she can't wear pearls without spoiling them. To a woman like Elsie, whose smooth white body was her god and her livelihood, the statement was a taunt and an insult. Besides, he had upset the jig-saw on the floor—hadn't he? just as she was finishing it.
"Yes, you've been covering them up lately with a feather thing on your shoulders," he went on. "I wondered why. You might have told me, Elsie. It wasn't fair. You know how they came to us..."
"Oh, don't tell me that damned old story again!" she cried. "I'm sick to death of it!" And she stuck her fingers in her ears. "The palace gates and the old faker and the rest of it. I'll tell you there's a faker in this room now, my God, and it's not me!"
"I wasn't going to tell it to you again," said the boy. But it has got to be told. Five centuries ago, the Maharajah of Chitipur, returning from a ride, found his soldiers driving away from the gates an old man with a begging bowl. The Maharajah was young and gentle, and bade them desist. For years afterwards the old man sat in the dust with his beggar's bowl beside him, absorbed in his contemplations; and the Maharajah as he rode in and out would stop and speak about faith and religion with the old man. At times he dismounted and sat in the dust side by side with him, questioning him about the high mysteries. Then came a morning when the Maharajah found the old man standing and waiting.
"My second summons has come to me," he said. "I have now to go up to the hills, and I shall not come back. But because I have received much kindness at your hands, I give you the only thing I have to give."
As he spoke, he untied the rags of his long coat, and placed in the Maharajah's hands a long rope of unrivalled pearls. The Maharajah, however, drew back, thinking that through all these years he had harboured a thief at his gates. But the old man smiled.
"Have no fear, my son. They are mine to give."
"And who then are you?" asked the Maharajah.
"A nameless one," said the other. "But before the first call came to me, now many years ago, I was Ulla Singh Bahadur, Maharajah of Laipur," and he named thus a great kingdom to the east of Chitipur. Then he took up his bowl, and went up the road towards the hills.
This is the story which Elsie Marsh refused to hear again in her apartment in the Avenue Matignon, and this was the necklace which the young Rajah was now looking at in dismay.
"How can I go back?" he asked pitifully.
He had come to England upon a great occasion, his father's representative. The rope of pearls had been trusted to him and to the Maharajah's secretary, who went with him, that he might pay due honour to his King and Emperor by wearing it in the ceremonies. And those ceremonies once over, he had lent it to Elsie Marsh.
"I was mad," he said, and his voice broke.
How was he going to face that stern man with this ruined thing in his hands? It was sacred, it was the very luck of his dynasty. His heart stopped beating in his breast as he thought of that meeting and what would come of it.
"He'll disinherit me...He'll keep me in prison...He may—who's to stop him—even have me killed?"
His voice sank to a whisper as he spoke. All the boyish swagger had gone. He was a son facing his father in an extremity of terror.
And suddenly Elsie Marsh laughed; but without amusement, spitefully, jeeringly. Pity was not within her range. Affection, such as she had, was reserved for some worthless little parasite. Men were shadows upon a mirror. They appeared in and passed away from it. What they were before, and what became of them afterwards, didn't matter, didn't exist, for her. In a month she had forgotten their names. They must have money whilst they were passing—money for her to waste—that was all.
"I'm done for," said Nahendra Nao, running the rope of pearls through his fingers. "It's no use laughing, Elsie—we've got to face it."
"We?" she shouted. "What have I got to do with it? Isn't that like a man? I didn't ask you to come running after me, did I?" And Nahendra Nao began really to raise his eyes to her angry face, and to take stock of her—his marvellous girl—for the first time. The knowledge that he was doing it fanned her wrath. It grew with the words she used. She felt wronged.
"I had lots of friends, hadn't I? You were as proud as you could be, weren't you?—to show me off, and yourself off for being with me. You got what you paid for, didn't you?" Her voice had risen to a screech. Nahendra Nao was staring at her, amazed, incredulous, that what he heard, she spoke. The marvellous evening together! The dream of some sort of future when the months of separation would sharpen the ecstasy of the months when they were together. He and this girl, ugly in her rage, with the mud bubbling up in her and out of her mouth.
"And you needn't think it has all been peaches and cream for me—my word, no! Bored?" She reached her arms above her head. "I've been bored as stiff as if I was in a coffin. My God! All that polo talk at Delly or Helly, or wherever you play it. And what about my position, eh? Did you ever think of that, you and your pearls? What do I care what happens to you? After all—" and she smiled horridly and licked her lips round with her tongue. These were the words, and she was going to use them, the unforgivable words: "After all, it didn't do Elsie Marsh much good, you know, to be running round with a coloured boy."
Nahendra Nao stood up as if a spring had been released in him, his shoulders back, his head erect; and once more for a second Elsie Marsh was afraid. The lad noticed her fear. A bitter smile twisted his lips.
"You have nothing to fear from me, Elsie," he said, gently and quietly.
He took out his handkerchief, and wrapped the rope of pearls as best he could within it. It was too big a parcel for him to stow away in any pocket.
"I'll send round for my clothes in the morning, Elsie," he said, and he went out of the room. Elsie Marsh sat and listened. She heard the door latch gently.
"That's over, then," she said to herself. Men who slammed doors behind them came back. Men who closed them gently did not. "And he upset that puzzle, too, just as I was finishing it. On purpose. I'll swear he did! That's the sort of boy he is." And Elsie Marsh finished her brandy and soda.
CHAPTER III MAJOR SCOTT CARRUTHERS IS BOISTEROUS
NAHENDRA NAO, Prince of Chitipur, walked home no doubt on that early morning, and walked home soberly; and an instinct of common sense made him tuck his pearls into the big pocket of his overcoat. These details are certain. For he found himself standing in his drawing-room at the Ritz Hotel with the dust of the street upon his shoes, and the great rope of disfigured pearls on the table in front of him.
"I wonder," he was saying in a harsh whisper. "I think I left it in London. Carruthers was careful about it. Yes, I left it in London."
He was not very coherent, but it was just as well that Carruthers had made him leave "it" in London. "It" was a small black automatic pistol, and had he brought it, he would surely have blown out his brains that morning in his apartment at the Ritz. And not now in fear of his father, but from the intensity of his humiliation.
"A coloured boy—who had bored her stiff—and disgraced her into the bargain."
The words, even in the memory, seared him like a hot iron. He took off his overcoat and folded it neatly, and laid it upon a chair. Then he sat at the table with his head between his palms. He was very young, and the tears ran out between his fingers and rolled down the backs of his hands.
A long while after—for the daylight was flowing into the room at the edges of the blinds—a door was opened and a man came into the room. He too was wearing a dinner jacket, buttoned across his breast, and he carried an overcoat over his arm. He was a man of forty years, and of the middle height, clean-shaven, not ill-looking, not good-looking. It was easier to remember the clean cavalry man's cut of his figure than to carry in the mind any picture of his face. This was Major Scott Carruthers, a retired officer of Indian horse, secretary to His Highness the Maharajah of Chitipur, and temporary bear-leader to Nahendra Nao on his first visit to Europe. He stared in astonishment at the boy for a few seconds. Then he closed the door, laid down his hat and coat, and moved to the boy's side. He was very neat and quiet in all his actions.
He looked down at Nahendra Nao with a little smile of amusement.
"Well, the affair would have had to end one day," he reflected. "On the whole, it was for the best that it should end in a blazing row."
He raised his hand above Nahendra Nao's shoulder, but he did not let it fall. His eyes had noticed the great chaplet of pearls tossed upon the table. What was it doing there? Why had it been brought out from the strong-room of the hotel? And when? There would have been no one able to open the safes at that hour of the morning. The young fool must have taken it out before, to show it to Elsie Marsh. Then he drew in a breath.
There was something wrong with that great chaplet. The pearls were dead. Their sheen had gone. There were discolorations.
"Natty!" he cried, and now indeed his hand fell heavily upon the boy's shoulder.
The Prince sprang to his feet, startled and ashamed to have been caught in this moment of weakness.
