Читать книгу The Man in Ratcatcher and Other Stories - Sapper - Страница 7

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For the twentieth time the Man went through the whole wretched business again, in his mind. To the casual diner at the Milan, he was just an ordinary well-groomed Englishman, feeding by himself, and if he ate a little wearily, and there was a gleam of something more than sadness in the deep-set eyes, it was not sufficiently noticeable to attract attention.

"Monsieur finds everything to his satisfaction?" The head-waiter paused by the table, and the Man glanced up at him. A smile flickered round his mouth as the irony of the question struck home, and, almost unconsciously, his hand touched the letter in his coat pocket.

"Everything, thank you," he answered, gravely. "Everything, François, except the whole infernal universe."

The head-waiter shook his head sympathetically.

"I regret, Monsieur Lethbridge, that our kitchen is not large enough to keep that on the bill of fare."

"Otherwise you'd cook it to a turn and make even it palatable," said Lethbridge, bitterly. "No, it's beyond you, François; and, at the moment, it looks as if it was beyond me. Tell 'em to bring me a half bottle of the same, will you?"

The head-waiter picked up the empty champagne bottle, and then paused for a moment. Lethbridge was an old customer, and with François that was the same as being an old friend. For years he had come to the Milan, and, latterly, he had always brought the Girl with him, a wonderful, clear-eyed, upstanding youngster, who seemed almost too young for the narrow gold ring on her left hand. And François, who had once heard him call her his Colt, had nodded his approval and been glad. It seemed an ideal marriage, and he was nothing if not sentimental. But to-night all was not well; the Colt had been a bit tricky perhaps; the snaffle had not been quite light enough in the tender mouth. And so Françoise paused, and the eyes of the two men met.

"The younger they are, M'sieur—the more thoroughbred—the gentler must be the touch. Otherwise—" He shrugged his shoulders, and brushed an imaginary crumb from the table.

"Yes, François," said Lethbridge, slowly, "otherwise—"

"They hurt their mouths, M'sieur; and that hurts those who love them. And sometimes it's not the youngster's fault."

The next moment he was bowing some new arrivals to a table, while Hugh Lethbridge stared thoughtfully across the crowded room to where the orchestra was preparing to give their next selection.

"Sometimes it's not the youngster's fault." He took the letter out of his pocket and read it through again, though every word of it was branded in letters of fire on his brain.

"I hope this won't give you too much of a shock," it began, "but I can't live with you any more."

"Too much of a shock!" Dear Heavens! It had been like a great, stunning blow from which he was still dazedly trying to recover.

"Nothing seems to count with you except your business and making money." Hugh's lips twisted into a bitter smile. "You grudge me every penny I spend; and then refuse to let me have my own friends."

Oh, Colt, Colt, how brutally untrue a half truth can be!

"Everything has been going wrong lately, and so I thing it's better to have a clean cut. There's no good you asking me to come back.—DORIS."

Once more Hugh Lethbridge stared across the room. A waiter placed the new bottle on the table, but he lock no notice. His mind was busy with the past, and his untasted food grew cold on the plate in front of him.

It was in the summer of 1917 that Hugh Lethbridge, being on sick leave from France, met Doris Lashley for the first time. She was helping at the hospital where Hugh came to rest finally; and having once set eyes on her, he made no effort to hurry his departure unduly. The contrast between talking to Doris and wallowing in the mud-holes of Passchendaele was very pleasant; and in due course, assisted by one or two taxi-rides and some quiet dinners à deux, he proposed and was accepted. In October he married her; in November he returned to France, after a fortnight's honeymoon spent in Devonshire.

He went back to his old battalion, and stagnated with them through the winter. But the stagnation was made endurable by the wonder of the girl who was his: by the remembrance of those unforgettable days and nights when he had been alone with her in the little hotel down Dawlish way; by the glory of her letters. For she was a very human girl, even though she was just a Colt. Nineteen and a half is not a very great age, and sometimes of a night Hugh would lie awake listening to the rattle of a machine-gun down the line, and the half-forgotten religion of childhood would surge through his mind. Thirty seems old to nineteen, and dim, inarticulate prayers would rise to the great brooding Spirit above that He would never let this slip of a girl down. Then sleep would come—sleep, when a kindly Fate would sometimes let him dream of her; dreams when she would come to him out of the mists, and they would stand together again in the little sandy cove with the red cliffs towering above them. She would put her hands on his shoulders, and shake him gently to and fro until, just as he was going to kiss her, a raucous voice would bellow in his ear, "Stand to." And the Heaven of imagination would change to the Hell of grey trenches just before the dawn.

In March, 1918, Hugh wangled a fortnight's leave. And at this point it is necessary to touch for a moment on that unpleasant essential to modern life—money. The girl had brought in as her contribution to the establishment the sum of one hundred pounds a year left her by her grandmother; Hugh had about three hundred a year private means in addition to his Army pay. Before the war it had been in addition to what he was making in the City; after the war it would be the same again. And, as everyone knows, what a man may make in the City depends on a variety of circumstances, many of which are quite outside his own control. That point, however, concerns the future; and for the moment it is March, 1918—leave. Moreover, as has been said, the girl was just a Colt.

For a fortnight they lived—the Man with his eyes wide open, but not caring—at the rate of five thousand a year. They blew two hundred of the best, and loved every minute of it. Then came the German offensive, and we are not concerned with the remainder of 1918. Sufficient to say that in his wisdom—or was it his folly?—there was no addition to the family when, in February, 1919, he was demobilised, and the story proper begins.

Hugh's gratuity was just sufficient to supply the furniture for one room in the house they took near Esher. If it had been expended on lines of utility rather than those of show it would have gone farther; but the stuff was chosen by Doris one afternoon while he was at the office, and when she pointed it out to him with ill-concealed pride at the shop, he stifled his misgivings and agreed that it was charming. It was; so was the price. For the remainder of the furniture he dipped into his capital, at a time when he wanted every available penny he could lay his hands on for his business. He never spoke to Doris about money; there were so many other things to discuss as the evenings lengthened and spring changed to early summer. They were intensely personal things, monotonous to a degree to any Philistine outsider who might have been privileged to hear them. But since they seemed to afford infinite satisfaction to the two principal performers, the feelings of a Philistine need not be considered.

And then one evening a whole variety of little things happened together. To start with, Hugh had spent the afternoon going more carefully than usual into books and ledgers, and when he had finished he lit a cigarette and stared a trifle blankly at the wall opposite. There was no doubt about it, business was rotten. Stuff which he had been promised, and for which heavy deposits had been paid, was not forthcoming. It was no fault of the firms he was dealing with; he knew that their letters of regret were real statements of fact. War-weariness, labour unrest, a hundred other almost indefinable causes were at work, and the stuff simply wasn't there to deliver. If he liked, as they had failed in their contract, he could have his deposit back, etc., etc. So ran half a dozen letters, and Hugh turned them over on his desk a little bitterly. It was no good to him having his deposit back; it was no good to him living on his capital. And there was no use mincing matters: as things stood he was making practically no income out of his work. It would adjust itself in time—that he knew. The difficulty was the immediate present and the next few months. What a pity it was he couldn't do as he would have done in the past—take rooms and live really quietly till things adjusted themselves. And then, with a start, he realised why he couldn't, and with a quick tightening of his jaw he rose and reached for his hat. She must never know—God bless her. Hang it, things would come right soon.

He bought an evening paper on his way down, and glanced over it mechanically.

"If," had written some brilliant contributor, "the nation at large, and individuals in particular, will not realise, and that right soon, that any business or country whose expenditure exceeds its income must inevitably be ruined sooner or later—"

Hugh got no farther. He crushed the paper into a ball and flung it out of the window, muttering viciously under his breath.

"Backed a stiff 'un?" said his neighbour, sympathetically. "I've had five in succession."

He walked from the station a little quicker than usual. There was nothing for it but drastic economy; and as for any idea of the little car Doris was so keen on, it simply couldn't be done. Anyway, as the agent had told him over the phone that morning, there was no chance of delivery for at least six months. Had advised getting a second-hand one if urgently needed—except that, of course, at the present moment they were more expensive than new ones. But still one could get one at once—in fact, he had one. Only three-fifty.

Hugh hung up his hat in the hall and stepped into the drawing-room. He could see Doris outside working in the garden, but for a moment or two he made no movement to join her. His eyes were fixed on the huge, luxurious ottoman, covered with wonderful fat cushions. It was undoubtedly the most comfortable thing he had ever sat on: it was made to be sat on, and nightly it was sat on—by both of them. It was the recipient of those intensely personal things so monotonous to the Philistine; and it had cost, with cushions and trappings complete, one hundred and twenty Bradburys.

He was still looking at it thoughtfully when the girl came in through the open window.

"I want a great big kiss, ever so quick, please," she announced, going up to him. "One more. Thank you!"

With his hands on her shoulders he held her away from him, and she smiled up into his eyes.

"I very nearly came and looked you up in your grubby old office to-day," she said, putting his tie straight. "And then I knew that I'd get on a bus going the wrong way, and I hadn't enough money for a taxi. I'd spent it all on a treat for you."

Almost abruptly his arms dropped to his sides.

"I didn't know you were coming up, darling," he said, pulling out his cigarette-case.

"Nor did I till just before I went," she answered. "Don't you want to know what the treat is?"

Without waiting for him to speak, she went on, prodding one of his waistcoat buttons gently with a little pink finger at each word.

"I bought two whopping fat peaches—one for you and one for me. They were awful expensive—seven shillings and sixpence each. And after dinner we'll eat them and make a drefful mess."

Now, I am fully aware that any and every male reader who may chance to arrive at this point will think that under similar circumstances he would argue thus: "The peaches were bought. After all, they were a little thing—fifteen shillings is not a fortune. Therefore, undoubtedly the thing to do was to take her in his arms, make much of her, and remark, 'You extravagant little bean—you'll break the firm if you go on like this. But I love you very much, and after we've made a drefful mess I'm going to talk to you drefful seriously,' or words to that effect."

My friendly male, you're quite correct. You appreciate the value of little things; you see how vastly more important they are than a stagnating business or any stupid fears as to what may happen to the being you love most in the world if—

Unfortunately, Hugh was not so wise in his time as you. That little thing seemed to be so big—it's a way of little things. It seemed bigger than the business and the motor-car and the ottoman all combined.

"My dear old thing," he said—not angrily, but just a little wearily—"have you no sense of the value of money?"

Then he turned and went to his own room, without looking back. And so he didn't see the look on the girl's face: the look of a child that has been spoken to sharply and doesn't understand—the look of a dog that has been beaten by the master it adores. If he had seen it there was still time—but he didn't. And when he came back five minutes later, remorseful and furious with himself, the girl was not there. She was upstairs, staring a little miserably out of the bedroom window.

And that had been the beginning of it. Sitting there in the restaurant, Hugh traced everything back to that. Of course, there had been other things, too. He saw them now clearly: a whole host of little stupid points which he had hardly thought of at the time. Business had not improved until—the irony of it—that very day, when a big deal had gone through successfully, and he had realised that the turning-point had come. He had hurried home to tell her, and had found—the letter.

Mechanically he lit a cigarette, and once again his thoughts went back over the last few months. That wretched evening when she gave him a heavy bill from her dressmaker, with a polite intimation at the bottom that something on account by return would oblige. He had had a particularly bad day; but she was his Colt, and there was no good being angry about it.

"They hurt their mouths, M'sieur." He ground out his cigarette savagely. "Handle them gently." And he had told her, when she mentioned her hundred a year, that she had already spent two in four months. It was true, but—what the devil had that got to do with it?

And then John Fordingham. Hugh's jaw set as he thought of that row. There he had been right—absolutely right. Fordingham was a man whose reputation was notorious. He specialised in young married women, and he was a very successful specialist. He was one of those men with lots of money, great personal charm, and the morals of a monkey. That was exactly what Hugh had said to her before flatly forbidding her to have anything to do with him.

He recalled now the sudden uplift of her shoulders, the straight, level look of her eyes.

"Forbid?" she had said.

"Forbid," he had answered. "The man is an outsider of the purest water."

And he had been right—absolutely right. He took out his cigarette-case again, and even as he did so he became rigid. Coming down the steps of the restaurant was the man himself, with Doris.

For a few moments everything danced before his eyes. The blood was rushing to his head: tables, lights, the moving waiters, swam before him in a red haze. Then he shrank back behind the pillar in front and waited for them to sit down. He saw her glance towards the table at which they had usually sat—the table which he had refused to have that night; then she followed Fordingham to one which had evidently been reserved for him at the other end of the restaurant. She sat down with her back towards Hugh, and by leaning forward he could just see her neck and shoulders gleaming white through the bit of flame-coloured gauze she was wearing over her frock.

His eyes rested on her companion, and for a while Hugh studied him critically and impartially. Faultlessly turned out, he was bending towards Doris with just the right amount of deferential admiration on his face. Occasionally he smiled, showing two rows of very white teeth, and as he talked he moved his hands in little gestures which were more foreign than English. They were well-shaped hands, perfectly manicured, a fact of which their owner was fully aware.

After a time Fordingham ceased to do the talking. The occasional smiles showed no more; a serious look, with just a hint of slave-like devotion in it, showed on his face as he listened to Doris, Once or twice he shook his head thoughtfully; once or twice he allowed his eyes to meet hers with an expression which required no interpretation.

"My poor child," it said; "my poor little hardly used girl. Don't you know that I love you, tenderly, devotedly? But, of course, I couldn't dream of saying so. I'm only just a friend."

It was so utterly obvious to the man behind the pillar, that for a while he watched them with the same disinterested feeling that he would have watched a play.

"She's telling him what a rotten life she's had," he reflected, cynically. "Her husband doesn't understand her. Fordingham answers the obvious cue with a soulful look. If only he had been the husband in question, there would have been no misunderstanding. Perhaps not. Only a broken heart, my Colt, that's all."

He looked up as François stopped in front of his table.

"She doesn't know I'm here, does she?" asked Hugh, quietly,

"No, M'sieur." The head-waiter glanced a little sadly at the two heads so close together.

Hugh took a piece of paper from his pocket, and scribbled a few words on it in pencil.

"I don't want her to know—at least, not yet. Would you ask the orchestra to play that?" He handed the slip across the table. "It's important." And then, "Wait, François; I want to find out where she goes to after dinner. It's too late now for a theatre, and I expect she's staying at an hotel. Can you do that for me?"

The head-waiter nodded in silence, and moved away. Very few men would have asked him to do such a tiling; he would have done it for still fewer. But this was an exception, and tragedy is never far off when the Fordinghams of this world dine with youngsters who have run away from their husbands.

Hugh, with an eagerness which almost suffocated him, waited for the first bars of the waltz he had asked the orchestra to play. The last time he had heard it, he had been dining at the Milan with Doris. It was their favourite waltz; on every programme they had made a point of dancing it together. Would she remember? Would it break through the wretched wall of misunderstanding, and carry her back to the days when it was just they two, and there was nothing else that mattered in the whole wide world?

The haunting melody stole gently through the room and, with his heart pounding madly, Hugh Lethbridge watched his wife. At the very first note she sat up abruptly, and with a grim triumph Hugh saw the look of sudden surprise on her companion's face. Then, very slowly, she turned and stared at their usual table. Her lips were parted, and to the man who watched so eagerly it seemed as if she were breathing a little quickly. Almost he fancied he could see a look of dawning wonder in her eyes, like a child awakening in a strange room.

Then she turned away, and sat motionless till the music sobbed into silence. And as her companion joined in the brief perfunctory applause, Hugh's glance for a moment rested on François. The head-waiter was smiling gently to himself.

Five minutes later she rose, and Fordingham, with a quick frown, got up with her. That acute judge of feminine nature was under no delusions as to what had happened, and behind the smiling mask of his face he cursed the orchestra individually and comprehensively. Quite obviously a girl not to be rushed; he had been congratulating himself on the progress made during dinner. In fact, he had been distinctly hopeful that the fruit was ripe for the plucking that very night. And now that confounded tune had wakened memories. And memories are the devil with women.

He adjusted her opera-cloak, and followed her to the door. Things would have to be handled carefully in the car going back, very carefully. One false word, and the girl would shy like a wild thing. He was thankful that he had already told her quite casually that by an extraordinary coincidence he was stopping at the same hotel as she was. At the time it had seemed to make not the slightest impression on her; she had not even required the usual glib lie that his flat was being done up.

He helped her into the car and spoke to the chauffeur. And a large man in a gorgeous uniform, having given a message to a small page-boy, watched the big Daimler glide swiftly down Piccadilly.

"Madame has gone to the Magnificent, M'sieur," were the words with which François roused Hugh from his reverie, a few minutes later.

"She remembered, François; she remembered that tune."

"Oui, M'sieur—she remembered. You must not let her forget again. Monsieur Fordingham is—" He hesitated, and left his sentence unfinished.

"Mr. Fordingham is a blackguard," said Hugh, grimly. "And I'm a fool. So between us she hasn't had much of a show."

"Monsieur is going to the Magnificent?" François pulled back his table.

"I am, François—shortly."

"Be easy, Monsieur. Be gentle. Don't hurt her mouth again—" He bowed as was befitting to an old customer. "Good-night, Monsieur. Will you be dining to-morrow?"

"That depends, mon ami. Perhaps—"

"I think you will, M'sieur. At that table—" With a smile he pointed to the usual one. "I will order your dinner myself—for two."