Читать книгу The Robe of Lucifer - Fred M. White - Страница 5

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GREENSTRAND'S exotic enthusiasm was not misplaced. A spur of the sea ran like a spear into the green heart of the mainland, whilst terraces of foliage uprose on either side, crowned by rocky diadems. The tiny bay formed a perfect harbour of refuge, where ships ran what time the west wind raged along that cruel coast. There were many cottages peeping out of the foliage here and there, but Greenstrand saw that most of them were ruined and deserted. The only house of any note—and that anything but a dominant one—stood upon a rocky shelf on the opposite side; a ferny hollow lay behind, and a pretty garden in front. There was nothing else that suggested the Home of Poesy.

A ragged ray of light, penetrating the hood of cloudland, lighted up Port Gwyn for a brief moment, but nothing disturbed the perfect silence there. There were no boats on the silver strand, and consequently no fishermen either. Was there yet another somnolent way of getting a living in these parts, Greenstrand wondered?

He dropped into the valley, and climbed up the other side. Before the comparative cottage of gentility he stopped. Under the thatched roof the swallows were building, on the tiny stretch of lawn a few dove-hued gulls were squatting. A tall fuchsia covered the front of the cottage, begonias and maiden-hair fern ran riot in the borders.

Greenland rapped with his knuckles on the door, and a voice bade him enter.

The traveller had made no mistake, he knew that voice well enough. Few people heard it save in song; therein it was familiar enough everywhere that the Queen's writ runs. There was no inky controversy as to Julien Ray's position as the foremost of modern poets; even the Superlatives admitted the fact in guarded aphorism.

The poet rose from a white deal table, innocent of a cloth, on which, from a pewter platter, he was making a hearty tea on brown bread and fried mackerel. In figure he was tall and spare, his hair was cropped short to the long lean head, his eyes were blue and tranquil. There was absolutely nothing striking-looking about him. In the company of Cornish farmers he would pass as one of themselves, for Ray had a fine faculty for adapting himself to his company; he had mastered the art of being at home everywhere.

"I did not expect to see you for some days," he said; "indeed, you are so erratic that I really did not expect to see you at all."

"The very reason why you might have looked for my coming at any time," Greenstrand replied gravely. "Julien, I'm wet through."

Ray replied that he was glad to hear it. A millionaire, wet, and draggled, and miserable, is a sight that reconciles poverty to the inevitable.

"Of course, I can give you a bed," Ray went on; "only you will have to take your share in the work of the house, because I keep no servant, and do everything myself. This is my living-room, drawing-room, and library, all in one. Like the Irishman's description of a wigwam, so is this house. If you want to go from the drawing-room to the library, you just stay where you are."

Greenstrand looked around him with some interest. The door of this double-fronted cottage gave directly upon one room. On the stone floor lay a Turkey carpet. The uncurtained windows were full of flowers. The furniture was of the plainest. A few pictures on the walls were set off by gleaming domestic utensils. One wall was entirely lined with books; and under a window, let into the centre of these tomes, and commanding a magnificent view seaward, was the one handsome piece of upholstery there, an oak writing-table littered with papers. There was a double settle round the fireplace for use on cold or winter evenings. From the bagman point of view, five and twenty pounds would have covered the lot, the books excepted.

"I suppose you find eccentricity pays," Greenstrand remarked. "Commercially, it must be good business for a poet of your standing to live in a workman's cottage. That's where Salisbury gets the pull of Rosebery—one possesses a mysterious, Janus-like reserve, whilst the other is compelled to grin through the horse-collar of politics. During the seven years you have been here, you must have saved a lot of money."

"I haven't a penny," Ray responded cheerfully. "I had to borrow five pounds this morning from a farmer friend to pay a county court summons from a bookseller. The people about here take all my earnings as fast as I get them. But things are getting better; it's nothing like such a struggle as I had last year."

"You mean to say that you keep half the people about you?"

"My dear fellow, it's no exaggeration to say that I keep them all. You can be a great poet, and earn far less money than a third-rate novelist. In the spring I was so hard put to it, that I came very near to writing a detective romance, but happily the tragedy was averted. An American pork-packer started the fashion for early editions of my first volume, and I was saved. I happened to have a lot of copies by me."

"And you are actually happy here, Julien?"

"Greenstrand, I believe I am the happiest man alive. I have dreamed and hoped of fame, and it has come to me at thirty-five. Think of that! Again, I have not an enemy in the world. My health is perfect, my wants are few. With my limited means, I do more good than you with your millions. I have brought happiness here. When I came to Port Gwyn first, the people were starving—you should see them now. Port Gwyn lace will be as valuable as Rose-point some of these days."

"I heard that you had started a lace industry here. I read it in one of the evening papers, coupled with the information that you cleaned your teeth with cigar ash. There was also something about the kind of socks you wear; but I forget that priceless item."

"I have studied lace-making for years," Ray observed. "The people here used to catch pilchards in due season, and live on the proceeds for the rest of the year. But the pilchards don't come any more, and the people were starving. Perhaps you noticed the deserted cottages as you came along. Well, I taught the women how to make the lace."

"Incidentally finding the capital, I presume?"

"Of course. Where else do you suppose it came from? They took to the work splendidly. The men are picking it up too, but much more slowly. What we want now is a market, plus a call for our goods. The price obtained up to now hardly keeps body and soul together. So I buy it all myself, And sell it for what it will fetch. With your money and influence you might make the thing go for as."

"You mean as a commercial speculation for yourself?"

"Nothing of the kind," Ray cried indignantly. "I'm not a tradesman. If I could see a fair wage for my poor people I should be quite content. Then I could put a lot more hands on, all of whom want work at present. The greater the demand, the greater the profit for them. I should refuse to touch a penny of the money."

Greenstrand declined curtly. He was a trifle annoyed to find the hated topic of his money cropping up directly, even here. He had hoped to get away from that. The old familiar demon danced before him as he changed in his tiny bedroom. Ray was after his shekels already, like the rest—even Ray, to whom money was as last year's leaves. Doubtless before long the poet would be asking him for a subsidy, and artfully luring him into a broad scheme of philanthropy. Legions of hypocrites had tried the same thing before. Utopian programmes breathing Arcadian atmospheres—with a large margin for current expenses. Blest is the patron blind to the balance-sheet, only he is getting extinct.

Greenstrand came down to his brown bread and fried mackerel moodily. In his mind's eye he could see the sycophants who were fattening upon Ray's mistaken generosity. They would have none of his, for certain. Yet Dives enjoyed his meal as he had not relished one for many days; he expanded as he ate. Ray produced tobacco afterwards, and two clay pipes, also creamy ale in stone mugs.

"This is practically your fare whilst you are here," the poet explained. "More or less, I live on fish and potatoes. But, if you prefer a change, I'll go over to Port Jacob and get some meat for you, Greenstrand."

"No, thanks," Greenstrand said dryly. "You are a sufficiently good poet to be an indifferent cook. Besides, I came down here to get well out of the beaten track. I came quite alone, having given my secretary the slip at Bristol. But he knows my intentions, and I dare say he will find his way down here in a day or two. Death is a necessity to me. I suppose you can find room for him somewhere?"

"There is a furnished attic overhead," Ray replied hospitably. "I shall be glad to see Death again; the fellow is an enigma to me, and I am never tired of studying him. Let him come, by all means."

"Death is a curiosity," Greenstrand resumed. "You and he are the poles in emotional feeling. You have them all; Death has none. I believe that man to be absolutely devoid of feeling of any kind. If you stuck a pin in him, he would be none the wiser. Did you ever see him smile? He has a face like a wax mask. He would have made a magnificent judge, so great is his sense of fairness. He would acquit his greatest enemy on a nice technicality, and hang his own mother upon another. Misfortune marked that man for her own years ago, and pursued him as relentlessly as one Christian quarrelling with another on a point of faith. I dragged him out of a blacking factory, for which he was writing poetical advertisements—a Balliol scholar and Newdigate prizeman! That man will do anything I tell him; he never asks questions. Yes, Death is a curiosity."

"He is a very faithful servant," Ray remarked.

"Precisely. I pay him liberally, buying his virtues by the pound."

Ray smiled slightly. Friendship was not a cardinal virtue at all in Greenstrand's eyes. It existed only in books.

"I'm glad your views are not mine," the poet said; "if they were, I should be compelled to shut up shop to-morrow. It must be a horrible thing to believe in nothing, Arthur. And yet I have found goodness and faith and honour enough in the world. I believe it to be a good world, and the people in it good people."

Greenstrand paced the floor impatiently. A trailing wreath of smoke drifted round his head as he went. His dark grey eyes gleamed with scornful anger. He felt a passionate contempt, an envious contempt for Ray's happiness.

"Am I angry, or am I jealous to hear you talk thus?" he exclaimed. "What do you owe the world? Absolutely nothing. For years you were crushed and beaten down. Those who reviled you then come cringing to kiss your feet now. And yet you speak as if you had been cradled in purple."

"Well, it was a pull," Ray admitted, "but I am the better now for it. Is there nothing in fighting fortune as successfully as I have done?"

"You say nothing of three years' semi-starvation."

"It was worse than that," Ray said cheerfully. "More than once I have known the real want of food. The hard life killed one of the sweetest and dearest women that God ever gave to a struggling mortal. For five years I only tasted meat by accident, as it were; ay, I have picked up and eaten bread from the gutter. Once, when I was nearly crazy with hunger, I picked up a sovereign. What do you know about money, Arthur? Wait till you find a gold coin under the same circumstances. And all that time, thank God, I never lost faith in myself, my fellows, or my Maker."

"I am not acquainted with the disease," Greenstrand said cynically.

"No, unfortunately. Far better for you if you were. Without faith I should have gone headlong to perdition. I placed my trust in God."

"I have heard of others who are prone to lean upon the shoulder of Jupiter," Greenstrand replied thoughtfully. "You pray for assistance in the same faint hope that a struggling man goes to his banker for an overdraft—not that you expect it to come, but because it is the proper kind of thing to do. How truly English and insular, this asking the Almighty to back our bills for us! My poor mother used to say that unless I went to church I should never prosper. Therefore going to church is a pure matter of business, in which case the rich man could send a clerk instead. Ergo, the more clerks, the more pious."

"You speak as if there were no God," said Ray.

"There is no God," Greenstrand replied passionately. "It is a mere chimera. And if your God is the God of writ, how much greater is the devil? You call him a fallen angel, in revolt against the Deity. In revolt! Why, the devil is master of the universe! What a splendid lieutenant I should make with all my money. Backed by the power of the gold I have at my command, I could corrupt a continent I could place such temptations in the way of the best of people that they would fall miserably. At the outlay of a few thousands I could turn your little paradise here into a hell."

"There are thousands of good people beyond your power," Ray cried.

Greenstrand smiled as he took up his candle, a tallow one, in an earthern candlestick. The argument was not worth pursuing further.

"Good night, my simple child," he said, "and may you sleep better than I shall."

The rain pattered on the casement of Greenstrand's tiny room, the roar of the sea sounded hollow in his ears. Yet he lay back upon the coarse linen pillow, and slept as he had not slept for years.