Читать книгу The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping - Warwick Deeping - Страница 10

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They disliked each other from the first, meeting like two dogs who growl and pass each other with bristling hair.

For in the very nature of things they were antipathetic: Garland, fair and high-coloured and intense; Costello, yellow and faded and complacently corrupt. Costello was some ten years older than Garland; he had been in the East, and had come back with the East in his blood and in his skin. He drawled. He smoked innumerable cigarettes. To Garland he was somehow a thing of slime.

They met at the Tennis Club.

“Who’s the babe in the bib?”

Costello had a scurrilous tongue; and Garland, overhearing that remark and hearing it addressed to the girl whom he wished to marry, went hot about the ears. For Garland was vexed by a youthful and impetuous awkwardness, a sensitive self-regard. He was wearing a tie, and he knew quite well that he should not have been wearing a tie, but a taffeta shirt with the collar flopping open. He had had to put on a tie and a collar because his conventional shirts were both in the wash. But, after all ... !

He kept an eye on Costello. He had marked him down—for young Garland, unlike most of his generation was a good hater, a lad who in the old days would have whipped out a sword and made ugly thrusts. He was high-coloured, and thin, and long in the head, and his blue eyes would grow brittle like glass.

He asked someone about Costello.

“Who’s that smeary chap?”

“That? Oh, new member. Here from India or China. Believe he’s rather hot stuff.”

Life, as though for the fun of it, chose to push young Garland and Costello on to a court to play singles. Costello’s face and throat might be yellow, but his forearms had a kind of muddy greyness. He looked as flabby as a slug, and yet he wasn’t. When in play, a little satisfied smile seemed to trickle down his chin.

He took the first three games from young Garland as though he were taking candy from a child, and yet Garland rather fancied himself and was playing in the club team. He felt himself going hot about the ears. He whipped himself up; he put more sting into his drives; he rushed up to volley. But always, on the other side of the net, that other fellow with the greyish-yellow face returned his shots and beat him. Costello’s strokes were made with a kind of easy languor. Without appearing to move he was always in the right place, and from the tip of a long nose, which gave him a curiously goat-like look, the little smile seemed to trickle.

Garland knew that they were being watched; Betty Lambert was watching them. Also he knew that he was losing his temper, while knowing that he was a fool to lose it. This sniggering, complacent fellow was putting shots out of his reach, and doing it easily, and enjoying the doing of it. He would lure Garland up to the net, and then pass him down the side lines with a kind of mocking neatness.

Garland had not won a game. It was his service, and he served a stinger.

“No.”

Now Garland was quite sure that the serve had been a good one. His anger was sure of it. He paused, racket lowered, his fair head up.

“All right?”

“No—fault.”

Garland glanced at the row of spectators on the green seats. His blue eyes were angry and accusing.

“No—fault, Ronny.”

It was Betty’s voice and it stung him.

“Oh, all right. Sorry.”

But from that moment he played atrocious and tempestuous stuff, and knew that he was doing it and was making a nasty ass of himself, and somehow could not help it. And, at the end of the affair, Costello, strolling round with his languid shuffle and picking up his coat to extract a cigarette, asked Garland for a match.

“Got a match?”

Garland, wondering at himself, produced a box.

“Here. Off my game, rather.”

Costello lit his cigarette.

“Your back-hand grip’s all wrong. Besides—you hit too soon.”

Garland repocketed his matches. Damn the fellow!

They met at the club during week-ends for the rest of the summer, and nearly every week-end they played singles together, not because they liked it, but because of their mutual hate. It was a perpetual attack and repulse. Garland was most furiously urged to beat Costello at the game, but never was he able to overcome the other man’s sallow complacency or to remove that little trickle of a smile. It became a joke at the club.

“Hallo! There’s Garland having another shot at Costello.”

Invariably he was licked, though he spent a week of his summer holiday being coached by a pro. and another week of it playing at one of the south-coast tournaments. He came back in September and found Costello waiting for him; he played him and was beaten as usual.

For it was not that Garland was a poor sportsman and a bad loser. He was not. But in Costello he had come against his blood-enemy—his dog with an offensive smell. He hated him, and hated him without reason. He hated Costello’s trousers, his nose, his sallow skin, his smeary little smile, the way he walked, the cigarettes he smoked, the very chair he sat on. His hatred made him take Costello with a kind of frantic seriousness, whereas the rest of the club took Costello rather casually. He was disliked. He had a nasty tongue and unpleasant ways.

He was both servile and insolent. He seemed to have picked up something from the East. He was a cadger. He cadged cigarettes and matches. He would forget to pay for his tea. He never had tennis balls of his own. And having, with an air of friendliness, borrowed something from somebody, he would go behind the lender’s back and mock him.

On one of the last days, Garland, having received his usual licking, asked Costello a question in the middle of the tea-room.

“I say, Costello, have you ever bought a tennis ball?”

There was a laugh, but Costello had his answer ready.

“Oh, no need; I expect the rabbit to provide the balls.”

Someone gave a tug to Garland’s sleeve. It was Betty Lambert, for there was something in young Garland’s eyes that frightened her, and she did not want a scene. Scenes are absurd. They do not happen.

“Ronny, I want the cakes.”

He gazed at her with a kind of blind stare, and then suddenly sat down. He had felt like going for Costello’s throat.

Another year came; but Costello had departed, leaving various unpaid bills behind him and an unpleasant memory among the local tradesmen. He had borrowed money from his landlady and had left her in the lurch. The Club itself had some trouble in recovering one of the “cups” that Costello had won and held for the year. An Agag of a fellow. And in due course Garland married his Betty, and rented a nice new house, and gave himself to gardening and domesticity. Garland was a bright lad, and a junior partner in the firm of Phips, Heath & Garland. He had character and keenness, and a flair for the particular business in which he was engaged, and since the firm prospered exceedingly, Garland prospered with it. He was a somebody on the morning train, and he travelled first, and wore spats, and was known as a warm young man with a future. He was making his two-thousand a year, and, being in the know, had opportunities for pretty little dabbles in financial ventures. He kept a car and a gardener, and two little Garlands, and had forgotten to vex himself needlessly over games. The Garlands were people. They dined and danced and bridged with the best people, but always young Garland maintained a strenuous attention to business. He was prosperous, happy and healthy.

Every morning he caught the eight-fifty-seven train to Waterloo, and took the tube from Waterloo to the City. He had a walk of three or four hundred yards, and his walking was rapid and purposeful. His keen, fresh profile was turned towards the day’s adventure, for his successful career was very much an adventure. He loved it; he was absorbed in it. And then, one morning, he ran up against Costello. Almost they collided on a crowded piece of pavement in Threadneedle Street.

Their eyes met, and Costello’s face looked greyer and less yellow, but it wore that little trickle of a smile.

“ ’Morning, Garland.”

Something flared in Garland. He shouldered past Costello.

“Hallo! Still pot-hunting?”

And he passed on, but in the flash of Costello’s reappearance he had realized something about the man, a shabbiness, a sickliness, a smeary, seedy surface. Costello’s face was thinner; it had lost its sallow, larded complacency.

It did not occur to Garland that Costello might not have enough to eat, for that is the last thing to occur to a man whose blood is warm, and who has breakfasted well, and who proposes to breakfast well for the rest of his life. Garland had very definite views upon success and failure; and, like most practical men, he had a shrewd idea that most of the woe of the world is made for themselves by the woeful. But Costello had given him the impression of shabbiness, and he was glad of Costello’s shabbiness—healthily and humanly glad about it. He walked on to the office of Messrs. Phips, Heath & Garland with an added zest for the day’s work. That smeary old cad was fulfilling his destiny, and if he fell to hunting for fag-ends instead of for cups, so much the better for civilization.

But Garland did not foresee that the meeting with Costello would be repeated. It was. Their morning time-tables were so synchronized that they happened to pass each other in Threadneedle Street three mornings out of six. And Garland found himself expecting those meetings and looking forward to them. His enemy was his enemy still, a man whom he had never had the satisfaction of taking by the throat.

He would look Costello in the face with an air of amused and casual scorn.

“ ’Morning, Costello.”

He addressed the man as he would have addressed a groom—and a bad groom at that.

“ ’Morning, Costello.”

It was the flick of a whip, a nod and a patronizing word to the shabby dog, and Garland enjoyed it; for men do enjoy such things—whatever the moralists may have to say about it. Hatred is elemental. Your enemy is not worth while unless you can trample upon him.

As for Costello, he still wore that little smeary smile, but he wore it with a difference. It was surreptitious and a little forced, more ingratiating, less complacent. It had an edge of hunger and worry and haste. It sidled past people, and fawned on them, and was false and shameful and shameless. It was the smirk of the shabby cad and the cadger betrayed at last in the very failure of his cadging.

Garland told his wife.

“Funny thing—met that fellow Costello looking like a bookmaker’s tout. Pretty down, I should gather.”

He spoke of it with pleasure. Also, he was taking pleasure in observing the details of Costello’s person. He observed them minutely and with an interest that was obvious to the man observed. Costello’s face was a mass of little wrinkles; his lips were pale, his teeth yellow. His hair had grown thin, and Garland could postulate a bald patch under the grey felt hat. The hat itself suggested a greasiness; it needed a new band. The fellow’s soft collar was frayed. The insides of his trousers where they rubbed against his boots would be thin and shiny. The sleeves of his coat were badly wrinkled.

Pleasurable realities. Obviously Costello was not hitting the business ball very cleanly. His game was not bringing him cups, and his cadging had been found out. The world would not lend him anything on the security of that smeary smile. Excellent! Garland felt good. It was right and proper that the world should call the bluff of such creatures as Costello.

Then, one morning, Costello hesitated, smiled his smile, and stopped.

“Garland.”

“Hallo!”

“Still down at Malton?”

“I am.”

“Tennis club still going?”

“Yes; don’t go there often. Something better to do.”

“Making money?”

“Oh, plenty!”

He talked down at Costello. He let his voice drop on him like coppers tossed to a street singer. He was easy, and casual, and successful.

“Couldn’t lend me a quid, could you?”

Costello’s face was grey and eager. It had no smile. Its eyes were shifty and anxious.

Garland pulled out his pocket-book.

“I’ll give you a quid, Costello; I don’t lend money.”

“I’ll pay you back.”

“I don’t suppose so; it’s a chuck-away.”

He offered Costello the note, and Costello’s fingers accepted it, and something in Garland exulted. Miserable sponger! He watched Costello slip the note into his pocket. So the fellow could squirm and accept.

“Thanks awfully, old chap.”

Garland’s blue eyes hardened.

“You needn’t call me that; I’m not charitable.”

And he walked on, feeling that he had left Costello in the gutter.

Again, on going home, he told his wife about Costello; and Betty, being the mother of two children, and more kind to the world, perhaps, because children are not always kind, looked gravely at her husband.

“I am glad you gave him the money. Poor devil!”

But Garland did not wish to be misunderstood.

“Oh, I didn’t give it out of pity. One doesn’t pity a thing like Costello. One kicks him.”

“Ronny!”

“It’s a fact. Some dogs seem to be born mangy. The thing is to make a chap like Costello realize that he is mangy. Ask any normal man and he’ll tell you the same thing.”

She looked shocked.

“Is it because he used to beat you at tennis?”

It was a thrust, but to her surprise her husband accepted the charge, and dealt with it as he would have dealt with a business problem.

“Partly—perhaps. But that’s only what the highbrow people would call symbolism. Because there is something about a chap like Costello that makes the ordinary clean man see red. He belongs to that slimy sort of world that includes lounge-lizards, and hangers-on to pretty ladies, and young men who are deuced clever and superior and sponge on their fathers, and back-stair poets.”

Mrs. Garland opened her brown eyes more widely. She had known the babe and the passionate child in man, but even quiet and successful husbands could supply you with surprises.

“You men are very hard to each other!”

Her husband pointed the stem of his pipe at their garden.

“Have to be—sometimes. Life means that, and you and the kids. Peace here, Betty, and war in the city. But there are rules to a game even when it is a bit rough, and Costello is one of the fellows who plays to no rule. That’s why we out him—push him off the field.”

“Deliberately?”

“Certainly. Yellow men and red men are no use to us.”

In Threadneedle Street Garland continued to meet Costello, and Costello appeared to grow greyer and shabbier. He had made no attempt to return Garland’s pound note, and Garland would have been disappointed had Costello returned it. He had painted his portrait of Costello, and the fellow had to be like his portrait, sinister and shameful and futile. He noticed that Costello glanced at him with a kind of furtive insolence. His smile remained, but it had assumed the suggestion of a snarl.

“ ’Morning, Costello.”

Garland still gave him the casual, patronizing flick of the voice. Costello’s snarl pleased him. It was more significant than mere servility, for it betrayed the fact that Costello could be rubbed on the raw, and that like a cur he showed his teeth, but dared not bite. Yes, life was flaying Costello and rubbing in the salt, and Costello winced and snarled, and got shabbier and shabbier.

Came a raw morning in November when Costello faltered and stopped. He had a grizzled, grey, starved look. His nose was blue. His voice seemed to come stiffly, as though half frozen.

“Excuse me, Garland.”

“Well?”

“I’m rather put to it this week. You couldn’t let me have a fiver, could you?”

Carefully and deliberately Garland took silver from his trousers’ pocket, selected two half-crowns, and offered them to Costello. Neither man spoke. They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment with scorn and hatred. Mutely they said to each other terrible things.

Then Costello’s claw of a hand came out and took the five shillings. It made Garland think of the pecking beak of a hungry, cold-eyed bird.

They glared and went their ways, and Garland knew that he had planted the steel of his scorn deep in the other man’s body. He saw Costello as a body, not as a soul. Such a fellow had no soul. And Garland went on to his day’s work and enjoyed it, and lunched well at his city club, and entered his first-class compartment on the five-thirty-four train, and felt warm. He lit a pipe. It was a raw evening, and the London night was blue and blurred, and the lights looked huge. Garland watched them, and the glare of an occasional street, and the dreary and dead faces of the strange houses. Dim back-yards, and little squalid gardens, and chimney-pots, and slimy roofs. Probably Costello slunk home to some such kennel; and Garland was glad. All the bad things were good things when they happened to Costello.

Three days passed. It snowed; and then a raw, drizzling thaw set in, and people hurried in the streets. Breath steamed. Garland was strong and healthy, but even he enjoyed rubbing his hands in front of the office fire. His room was comfortable: it had a Turkey carpet and well-padded chairs; and a thick Harris-tweed overcoat hung behind the screen. He remembered that on the last occasion when he had seen Costello the fellow had had no overcoat.

Splendid; let the beast freeze!

Yes, he had not run up against Costello during the last few days. Probably Costello was feeling a bit pinched, and wished himself back in India. Garland sat down to read his morning’s letters.

A clerk opened the door.

“Someone wanting to see you, sir.”

“Who?”

“A man. He wouldn’t give his name. Looks rather a seedy customer.”

“What’s his business? ... Shut that door, Spicer—there’s a deuce of a draught.”

“He said he would tell you his business, sir.”

“You can tell him I don’t see strangers who refuse their names and won’t state their business.”

The clerk vanished, to reappear half a minute later. He closed the door.

“The fellow looks funny, sir.”

“Funny! What d’you mean?”

“Well, he looks almost as though he had been fished out of the water, frozen stiff. He wouldn’t give me his name.”

“Did you tell him——?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, tell him again. It’s perfectly absurd!”

The door closed on the clerk, and Garland heard voices. He could not help hearing them, for one of the voices was like a hoarse and rusty hinge, and both voices were raised. The hoarse voice was saying: “I don’t care a damn! I’m going to stay here till Garland comes out. You had better tell him to come out. My name’s Costello.”

Garland’s hands gripped the arms of his desk chair. He got up and went quickly to the door and opened it. The clerk was holding open the glass door leading into the vestibule, and in the open doorway stood Costello, with the grey steps and the grey street behind him. Almost he stood there like a man who was intoxicated and making a great effort to keep his balance. His feet were wide apart; he swayed.

Garland was angry. What the devil did the fellow mean by coming to his office and making a scene? He advanced upon Costello.

“Look here—clear out!”

A little, thin smile trickled down Costello’s face, but his eyes were smileless; they stared.

“I always licked you at tennis!”

Then something happened to him. He seemed both to crumple at the knees and to stagger backwards. He went down the steps like a man forcibly ejected, and lay there with his legs pointing up the steps and his head on the pavement. His deplorable felt hat had fallen off; he looked skull-headed and bald.

A man who was passing and the clerk hurried and bent over him. They got him by the shoulders.

“He’s fainted.”

Garland stood at the top of the steps.

“Better carry him in. Bring him into my office.”

So Costello was carried into Garland’s office, and they laid him on the hearth-rug before the fire and put a cushion under his head. The clerk, happening to touch one of his hands, found it as cold as stone.

“He looks pretty bad, sir.”

“Undo his collar.”

The clerk was kneeling beside Costello, and the other two were bending over him. The clerk unbuttoned Costello’s waistcoat and unfastened his tie and collar, and the thin shirt, lacking buttons, came open and disclosed Costello’s chest. He was wearing nothing but that thin shirt, and the ribs stood out under the yellow skin.

The clerk looked scared.

“Good Lord!—no wonder his hands felt cold! Regular skeleton!”

Garland had gone to his desk and had picked up the telephone. He spoke to the exchange.

“Put me on to the nearest doctor, please. Someone very ill here. You probably know a doctor and his number.... You do? Thanks very much. It’s urgent!”

Holding the receiver, he looked at the group before the fire. The clerk had risen and was standing staring at Costello, and over Costello’s grey and shrunken face, with its beak of a nose and bony forehead, the firelight flickered.

“He’s not breathing, sir.”

“Oh?”

“I believe he’s dead!”

When the doctor arrived, his problem was of the simplest. He looked at the grey face and the ashy lips. There was no need to listen for heart-beats. The stark stillness of the figure was sufficient.

“The man’s dead.... Starvation and cold—by the look of him.”

Garland travelled home by the usual train. He walked from the station and entered the house rather silently, nor did he rush upstairs to the nursery. His wife found him sitting and smoking before the drawing-room fire, with the lights switched off. She was a woman who noticed things, and especially things about her husband. She switched on the light over the sofa and sat down, and became busy with some piece of mending; but though she did not remark upon it, she was conscious of her husband’s silence.

“The Cuthberts have asked us to dine to-morrow. Shall we go?”

“Not very keen.”

She gave him a mother look.

“Not feeling seedy, old thing?”

“No.... Just thinking, that’s all.”

She allowed the silence to resettle itself. If her husband was preoccupied, it was probably a matter of business.

But suddenly, holding his pipe by the bowl, he spoke as though addressing the fire:

“One shouldn’t scorn some things—no, not in a particular sort of way.”

She was surprised. She let her hands rest in her lap.

“What ... are ... you talking about, Ronny?”

“Oh, nothing. Just meditating. Had rather hectic day.”

“Worries?”

“Oh, much as usual. Nothing to worry about—really. But sometimes one sits and thinks.”