Villa Rubein, and Other Stories

They meant him to marry her! Even she – she meant him to marry her! Her tantalising inscrutability; her sudden little tendernesses; her quick laughter; her swift, burning kisses; even the movements of her hands; her tears – all were evidence against her. Not one of these things that Nature made her do counted on her side, but how they fanned his longing, his desire, and distress! He went to the glass and tried to part his hair with his fingers, but being rather fine, it fell into lank streaks. There was no comfort to be got from it. He drew his muddy boots on. Suddenly he thought: ‘If I could see her alone, I could arrive at some arrangement!’ Then, with a sense of stupefaction, he made the discovery that no arrangement could possibly be made that would not be dangerous, even desperate. He seized his hat, and, like a rabbit that has been fired at, bolted from the room. He plodded along amongst the damp woods with his head down, and resentment and dismay in his heart. But, as the sun rose, and the air grew sweet with pine scent, he slowly regained a sort of equability. After all, she had already yielded; it was not as if…! And the tramp of his own footsteps lulled him into feeling that it would all come right.

‘Look at the thing practically,’ he thought. The faster he walked the firmer became his conviction that he could still see it through. He took out his watch – it was past seven – he began to hasten back. In the yard of the inn his driver was harnessing the horses; Swithin went up to him.

“Who told you to put them in?” he asked.

The driver answered, “Der Herr.”

Swithin turned away. ‘In ten minutes,’ he thought, ‘I shall be in that carriage again, with this going on in my head! Driving away from England, from all I’m used to – driving to – what?’ Could he face it? Could he face all that he had been through that morning; face it day after day, night after night? Looking up, he saw Rozsi at her open window gazing down at him; never had she looked sweeter, more roguish. An inexplicable terror seized on him; he ran across the yard and jumped into his carriage. “To Salzburg!” he cried; “drive on!” And rattling out of the yard without a look behind, he flung a sovereign at the hostler. Flying back along the road faster even than he had come, with pale face, and eyes blank and staring like a pug-dog’s, Swithin spoke no single word; nor, till he had reached the door of his lodgings, did he suffer the driver to draw rein.

XII

Towards evening, five days later, Swithin, yellow and travel-worn, was ferried in a gondola to Danielli’s Hotel. His brother, who was on the steps, looked at him with an apprehensive curiosity.

“Why, it’s you!” he mumbled. “So you’ve got here safe?”

“Safe?” growled Swithin.

James replied, “I thought you wouldn’t leave your friends!” Then, with a jerk of suspicion, “You haven’t brought your friends?”

“What friends?” growled Swithin.

James changed the subject. “You don’t look the thing,” he said.

“Really!” muttered Swithin; “what’s that to you?”

He appeared at dinner that night, but fell asleep over his coffee. Neither Traquair nor James asked him any further question, nor did they allude to Salzburg; and during the four days which concluded the stay in Venice Swithin went about with his head up, but his eyes half-closed like a dazed man. Only after they had taken ship at Genoa did he show signs of any healthy interest in life, when, finding that a man on board was perpetually strumming, he locked the piano up and pitched the key into the sea.

That winter in London he behaved much as usual, but fits of moroseness would seize on him, during which he was not pleasant to approach.

One evening when he was walking with a friend in Piccadilly, a girl coming from a side-street accosted him in German. Swithin, after staring at her in silence for some seconds, handed her a five-pound note, to the great amazement of his friend; nor could he himself have explained the meaning of this freak of generosity.

Of Rozsi he never heard again…

This, then, was the substance of what he remembered as he lay ill in bed. Stretching out his hand he pressed the bell. His valet appeared, crossing the room like a cat; a Swede, who had been with Swithin many years; a little man with a dried face and fierce moustache, morbidly sharp nerves, and a queer devotion to his master.

Swithin made a feeble gesture. “Adolf,” he said, “I’m very bad.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Why do you stand there like a cow?” asked Swithin; “can’t you see I’m very bad?”

“Yes, sir!” The valet’s face twitched as though it masked the dance of obscure emotions.

“I shall feel better after dinner. What time is it?”

“Five o’clock.”

“I thought it was more. The afternoons are very long.”

“Yes, sir!” Swithin sighed, as though he had expected the consolation of denial.

“Very likely I shall have a nap. Bring up hot water at half-past six and shave me before dinner.”

The valet moved towards the door. Swithin raised himself.

“What did Mr. James say to you?”

“He said you ought to have another doctor; two doctors, he said, better than one. He said, also, he would look in again on his way ‘home.’”

Swithin grunted, “Umph! What else did he say?”

“He said you didn’t take care of yourself.”

Swithin glared.

“Has anybody else been to see me?”

The valet turned away his eyes. “Mrs. Thomas Forsyte came last Monday fortnight.”

“How long have I been ill?”

“Five weeks on Saturday.”

“Do you think I’m very bad?”

Adolf’s face was covered suddenly with crow’s-feet. “You have no business to ask me question like that! I am not paid, sir, to answer question like that.”

Swithin said faintly: “You’re a peppery fool! Open a bottle of champagne!”

Adolf took a bottle of champagne – from a cupboard and held nippers to it. He fixed his eyes on Swithin. “The doctor said – ”

“Open the bottle!”

“It is not – ”

“Open the bottle – or I give you warning.”

Adolf removed the cork. He wiped a glass elaborately, filled it, and bore it scrupulously to the bedside. Suddenly twirling his moustaches, he wrung his hands, and burst out: “It is poison.”

Swithin grinned faintly. “You foreign fool!” he said. “Get out!”

The valet vanished.

‘He forgot himself!’ thought Swithin. Slowly he raised the glass, slowly put it back, and sank gasping on his pillows. Almost at once he fell asleep.

He dreamed that he was at his club, sitting after dinner in the crowded smoking-room, with its bright walls and trefoils of light. It was there that he sat every evening, patient, solemn, lonely, and sometimes fell asleep, his square, pale old face nodding to one side. He dreamed that he was gazing at the picture over the fireplace, of an old statesman with a high collar, supremely finished face, and sceptical eyebrows – the picture, smooth, and reticent as sealing-wax, of one who seemed for ever exhaling the narrow wisdom of final judgments. All round him, his fellow members were chattering. Only he himself, the old sick member, was silent. If fellows only knew what it was like to sit by yourself and feel ill all the time! What they were saying he had heard a hundred times. They were talking of investments, of cigars, horses, actresses, machinery. What was that? A foreign patent for cleaning boilers? There was no such thing; boilers couldn’t be cleaned, any fool knew that! If an Englishman couldn’t clean a boiler, no foreigner could clean one. He appealed to the old statesman’s eyes. But for once those eyes seemed hesitating, blurred, wanting in finality. They vanished. In their place were Rozsi’s little deep-set eyes, with their wide and far-off look; and as he gazed they seemed to grow bright as steel, and to speak to him. Slowly the whole face grew to be there, floating on the dark background of the picture; it was pink, aloof, unfathomable, enticing, with its fluffy hair and quick lips, just as he had last seen it. “Are you looking for something?” she seemed to say: “I could show you.”

“I have everything safe enough,” answered Swithin, and in his sleep he groaned.

He felt the touch of fingers on his forehead. ‘I’m dreaming,’ he thought in his dream.

She had vanished; and far away, from behind the picture, came a sound of footsteps.

Aloud, in his sleep, Swithin muttered: “I’ve missed it.”

Again he heard the rustling of those light footsteps, and close in his ear a sound, like a sob. He awoke; the sob was his own. Great drops of perspiration stood on his forehead. ‘What is it?’ he thought; ‘what have I lost?’ Slowly his mind travelled over his investments; he could not think of any single one that was unsafe. What was it, then, that he had lost? Struggling on his pillows, he clutched the wine-glass. His lips touched the wine. ‘This isn’t the “Heidseck”!’ he thought angrily, and before the reality of that displeasure all the dim vision passed away. But as he bent to drink, something snapped, and, with a sigh, Swithin Forsyte died above the bubbles…

When James Forsyte came in again on his way home, the valet, trembling took his hat and stick.

“How’s your master?”

“My master is dead, sir!”

“Dead! He can’t be! I left him safe an hour ago.”

On the bed Swithin’s body was doubled like a sack; his hand still grasped the glass.

James Forsyte paused. “Swithin!” he said, and with his hand to his ear he waited for an answer; but none came, and slowly in the glass a last bubble rose and burst.

December 1900.

To MY SISTER MABEL EDITH REYNOLDS

THE SILENCE

I

In a car of the Naples express a mining expert was diving into a bag for papers. The strong sunlight showed the fine wrinkles on his brown face and the shabbiness of his short, rough beard. A newspaper cutting slipped from his fingers; he picked it up, thinking: ‘How the dickens did that get in here?’ It was from a colonial print of three years back; and he sat staring, as if in that forlorn slip of yellow paper he had encountered some ghost from his past.

These were the words he read: “We hope that the setback to civilisation, the check to commerce and development, in this promising centre of our colony may be but temporary; and that capital may again come to the rescue. Where one man was successful, others should surely not fail? We are convinced that it only needs…” And the last words: “For what can be sadder than to see the forest spreading its lengthening shadows, like symbols of defeat, over the untenanted dwellings of men; and where was once the merry chatter of human voices, to pass by in the silence…”

On an afternoon, thirteen years before, he had been in the city of London, at one of those emporiums where mining experts perch, before fresh flights, like sea-gulls on some favourite rock. A clerk said to him: “Mr. Scorrier, they are asking for you downstairs – Mr. Hemmings of the New Colliery Company.”

Scorrier took up the speaking tube. “Is that you, Mr. Scorrier? I hope you are very well, sir, I am – Hemmings – I am – coming up.”

In two minutes he appeared, Christopher Hemmings, secretary of the New Colliery Company, known in the City – behind his back – as “Down-by-the-starn” Hemmings. He grasped Scorrier’s hand – the gesture was deferential, yet distinguished. Too handsome, too capable, too important, his figure, the cut of his iron-grey beard, and his intrusively fine eyes, conveyed a continual courteous invitation to inspect their infallibilities. He stood, like a City “Atlas,” with his legs apart, his coat-tails gathered in his hands, a whole globe of financial matters deftly balanced on his nose. “Look at me!” he seemed to say. “It’s heavy, but how easily I carry it. Not the man to let it down, Sir!”

“I hope I see you well, Mr. Scorrier,” he began. “I have come round about our mine. There is a question of a fresh field being opened up – between ourselves, not before it’s wanted. I find it difficult to get my Board to take a comprehensive view. In short, the question is: Are you prepared to go out for us, and report on it? The fees will be all right.” His left eye closed. “Things have been very – er – dicky; we are going to change our superintendent. I have got little Pippin – you know little Pippin?”

Scorrier murmured, with a feeling of vague resentment: “Oh yes. He’s not a mining man!”

Hemmings replied: “We think that he will do.” ‘Do you?’ thought Scorrier; ‘that’s good of you!’

He had not altogether shaken off a worship he had felt for Pippin – “King” Pippin he was always called, when they had been boys at the Camborne Grammar-school. “King” Pippin! the boy with the bright colour, very bright hair, bright, subtle, elusive eyes, broad shoulders, little stoop in the neck, and a way of moving it quickly like a bird; the boy who was always at the top of everything, and held his head as if looking for something further to be the top of. He remembered how one day “King” Pippin had said to him in his soft way, “Young Scorrie, I’ll do your sums for you”; and in answer to his dubious, “Is that all right?” had replied, “Of course – I don’t want you to get behind that beast Blake, he’s not a Cornishman” (the beast Blake was an Irishman not yet twelve). He remembered, too, an occasion when “King” Pippin with two other boys fought six louts and got a licking, and how Pippin sat for half an hour afterwards, all bloody, his head in his hands, rocking to and fro, and weeping tears of mortification; and how the next day he had sneaked off by himself, and, attacking the same gang, got frightfully mauled a second time.

Thinking of these things he answered curtly: “When shall I start?”

“Down-by-the-starn” Hemmings replied with a sort of fearful sprightliness: “There’s a good fellow! I will send instructions; so glad to see you well.” Conferring on Scorrier a look – fine to the verge of vulgarity – he withdrew. Scorrier remained, seated; heavy with insignificance and vague oppression, as if he had drunk a tumbler of sweet port.

A week later, in company with Pippin, he was on board a liner.

The “King” Pippin of his school-days was now a man of forty-four. He awakened in Scorrier the uncertain wonder with which men look backward at their uncomplicated teens; and staggering up and down the decks in the long Atlantic roll, he would steal glances at his companion, as if he expected to find out from them something about himself. Pippin had still “King” Pippin’s bright, fine hair, and dazzling streaks in his short beard; he had still a bright colour and suave voice, and what there were of wrinkles suggested only subtleties of humour and ironic sympathy. From the first, and apparently without negotiation, he had his seat at the captain’s table, to which on the second day Scorrier too found himself translated, and had to sit, as he expressed it ruefully, “among the big-wigs.”

During the voyage only one incident impressed itself on Scorrier’s memory, and that for a disconcerting reason. In the forecastle were the usual complement of emigrants. One evening, leaning across the rail to watch them, he felt a touch on his arm; and, looking round, saw Pippin’s face and beard quivering in the lamplight. “Poor people!” he said. The idea flashed on Scorrier that he was like some fine wire sound-recording instrument.

‘Suppose he were to snap!’ he thought. Impelled to justify this fancy, he blurted out: “You’re a nervous chap. The way you look at those poor devils!”

Pippin hustled him along the deck. “Come, come, you took me off my guard,” he murmured, with a sly, gentle smile, “that’s not fair.”

He found it a continual source of wonder that Pippin, at his age, should cut himself adrift from the associations and security of London life to begin a new career in a new country with dubious prospect of success. ‘I always heard he was doing well all round,’ he thought; ‘thinks he’ll better himself, perhaps. He’s a true Cornishman.’

The morning of arrival at the mines was grey and cheerless; a cloud of smoke, beaten down by drizzle, clung above the forest; the wooden houses straggled dismally in the unkempt semblance of a street, against a background of endless, silent woods. An air of blank discouragement brooded over everything; cranes jutted idly over empty trucks; the long jetty oozed black slime; miners with listless faces stood in the rain; dogs fought under their very legs. On the way to the hotel they met no one busy or serene except a Chinee who was polishing a dish-cover.

The late superintendent, a cowed man, regaled them at lunch with his forebodings; his attitude toward the situation was like the food, which was greasy and uninspiring. Alone together once more, the two newcomers eyed each other sadly.

“Oh dear!” sighed Pippin. “We must change all this, Scorrier; it will never do to go back beaten. I shall not go back beaten; you will have to carry me on my shield;” and slyly: “Too heavy, eh? Poor fellow!” Then for a long time he was silent, moving his lips as if adding up the cost. Suddenly he sighed, and grasping Scorrier’s arm, said: “Dull, aren’t I? What will you do? Put me in your report, ‘New Superintendent – sad, dull dog – not a word to throw at a cat!’” And as if the new task were too much for him, he sank back in thought. The last words he said to Scorrier that night were: “Very silent here. It’s hard to believe one’s here for life. But I feel I am. Mustn’t be a coward, though!” and brushing his forehead, as though to clear from it a cobweb of faint thoughts, he hurried off.

Scorrier stayed on the veranda smoking. The rain had ceased, a few stars were burning dimly; even above the squalor of the township the scent of the forests, the interminable forests, brooded. There sprang into his mind the memory of a picture from one of his children’s fairy books – the picture of a little bearded man on tiptoe, with poised head and a great sword, slashing at the castle of a giant. It reminded him of Pippin. And suddenly, even to Scorrier – whose existence was one long encounter with strange places – the unseen presence of those woods, their heavy, healthy scent, the little sounds, like squeaks from tiny toys, issuing out of the gloomy silence, seemed intolerable, to be shunned, from the mere instinct of self-preservation. He thought of the evening he had spent in the bosom of “Down-by-the-starn” Hemmings’ family, receiving his last instructions – the security of that suburban villa, its discouraging gentility; the superior acidity of the Miss Hemmings; the noble names of large contractors, of company promoters, of a peer, dragged with the lightness of gun-carriages across the conversation; the autocracy of Hemmings, rasped up here and there, by some domestic contradiction. It was all so nice and safe – as if the whole thing had been fastened to an anchor sunk beneath the pink cabbages of the drawing-room carpet! Hemmings, seeing him off the premises, had said with secrecy: “Little Pippin will have a good thing. We shall make his salary L – . He’ll be a great man – quite a king. Ha-ha!”

Scorrier shook the ashes from his pipe. ‘Salary!’ he thought, straining his ears; ‘I wouldn’t take the place for five thousand pounds a year. And yet it’s a fine country,’ and with ironic violence he repeated, ‘a dashed fine country!’

Ten days later, having finished his report on the new mine, he stood on the jetty waiting to go abroad the steamer for home.

“God bless you!” said Pippin. “Tell them they needn’t be afraid; and sometimes when you’re at home think of me, eh?”

Scorrier, scrambling on board, had a confused memory of tears in his eyes, and a convulsive handshake.

II

It was eight years before the wheels of life carried Scorrier back to that disenchanted spot, and this time not on the business of the New Colliery Company. He went for another company with a mine some thirty miles away. Before starting, however, he visited Hemmings. The secretary was surrounded by pigeon-holes and finer than ever; Scorrier blinked in the full radiance of his courtesy. A little man with eyebrows full of questions, and a grizzled beard, was seated in an arm-chair by the fire.

“You know Mr. Booker,” said Hemmings – “one of my directors. This is Mr. Scorrier, sir – who went out for us.”

These sentences were murmured in a way suggestive of their uncommon value. The director uncrossed his legs, and bowed. Scorrier also bowed, and Hemmings, leaning back, slowly developed the full resources of his waistcoat.

“So you are going out again, Scorrier, for the other side? I tell Mr. Scorrier, sir, that he is going out for the enemy. Don’t find them a mine as good as you found us, there’s a good man.”

The little director asked explosively: “See our last dividend? Twenty per cent; eh, what?”

Hemmings moved a finger, as if reproving his director. “I will not disguise from you,” he murmured, “that there is friction between us and – the enemy; you know our position too well – just a little too well, eh? ‘A nod’s as good as a wink.’”

His diplomatic eyes flattered Scorrier, who passed a hand over his brow – and said: “Of course.”

“Pippin doesn’t hit it off with them. Between ourselves, he’s a leetle too big for his boots. You know what it is when a man in his position gets a sudden rise!”

Scorrier caught himself searching on the floor for a sight of Hemmings’ boots; he raised his eyes guiltily. The secretary continued: “We don’t hear from him quite as often as we should like, in fact.”

To his own surprise Scorrier murmured: “It’s a silent place!”

The secretary smiled. “Very good! Mr. Scorrier says, sir, it’s a silent place; ha-ha! I call that very good!” But suddenly a secret irritation seemed to bubble in him; he burst forth almost violently: “He’s no business to let it affect him; now, has he? I put it to you, Mr. Scorrier, I put it to you, sir!”

But Scorrier made no reply, and soon after took his leave: he had been asked to convey a friendly hint to Pippin that more frequent letters would be welcomed. Standing in the shadow of the Royal Exchange, waiting to thread his way across, he thought: ‘So you must have noise, must you – you’ve got some here, and to spare…’

On his arrival in the new world he wired to Pippin asking if he might stay with him on the way up country, and received the answer: “Be sure and come.”

A week later he arrived (there was now a railway) and found Pippin waiting for him in a phaeton. Scorrier would not have known the place again; there was a glitter over everything, as if some one had touched it with a wand. The tracks had given place to roads, running firm, straight, and black between the trees under brilliant sunshine; the wooden houses were all painted; out in the gleaming harbour amongst the green of islands lay three steamers, each with a fleet of busy boats; and here and there a tiny yacht floated, like a sea-bird on the water. Pippin drove his long-tailed horses furiously; his eyes brimmed with subtle kindness, as if according Scorrier a continual welcome. During the two days of his stay Scorrier never lost that sense of glamour. He had every opportunity for observing the grip Pippin had over everything. The wooden doors and walls of his bungalow kept out no sounds. He listened to interviews between his host and all kinds and conditions of men. The voices of the visitors would rise at first – angry, discontented, matter-of-fact, with nasal twang, or guttural drawl; then would come the soft patter of the superintendent’s feet crossing and recrossing the room. Then a pause, the sound of hard breathing, and quick questions – the visitor’s voice again, again the patter, and Pippin’s ingratiating but decisive murmurs. Presently out would come the visitor with an expression on his face which Scorrier soon began to know by heart, a kind of pleased, puzzled, helpless look, which seemed to say, “I’ve been done, I know – I’ll give it to myself when I’m round the corner.”

Pippin was full of wistful questions about “home.” He wanted to talk of music, pictures, plays, of how London looked, what new streets there were, and, above all, whether Scorrier had been lately in the West Country. He talked of getting leave next winter, asked whether Scorrier thought they would “put up with him at home”; then, with the agitation which had alarmed Scorrier before, he added: “Ah! but I’m not fit for home now. One gets spoiled; it’s big and silent here. What should I go back to? I don’t seem to realise.”

Scorrier thought of Hemmings. “‘Tis a bit cramped there, certainly,” he muttered.