Читать книгу Old Wine and New - Warwick Deeping - Страница 10

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Scarsdale raised his hand to the knocker of the door, but again he hesitated. His hand sank to his side. His consciousness was both here and there, divided and yet joined together. He seemed to see both this dark door in a London street and that bed in a ward, and Marwood’s dying face.

Yes, it had been a strange coincidence, and the eyes of the man with the shirt had retained their intolerable sadness. His eyes had beckoned Scarsdale, and the orderly had bent over him.

“Look in my pocket. Letters and a photo. Don’t want strangers messing about with them. No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace. Julia.”

Scarsdale had understood.

“You want me—?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll do it when I go on leave.”

Marwood had smiled a pinched and tragic smile at him, and had gulped a few more words.

“Damned silly. Muddle. No more lice and cold feet. O, my God, what a muddle!”

And in a little while he had died.

Scarsdale’s eyes came back to the dark door, and if a door can have eyes, its eyes were the eyes of Marwood; a man who had died believing in nothing, hoping for nothing. There was no mystery other than that of knowing that man did not know what lay behind the closed door of his consciousness. God had withdrawn himself, even the gentle god of man’s own creating, and man’s cleverness had created another god of steel and powder and gas. Cleverness and chaos. Had man ever shown himself more callously and cunningly cruel?

But this dark door in this dark street? Was there nothing behind it, no light that was not an illusion, no glimmer of faith in something or someone? For the war had rent the bowels of the world’s compassion, and left an emptiness. There had been too much death, too much dirt to dirt, and though humanity might put on the old garments of sentiment it did not feel itself to be in any sacred place. A slaughter-house and a scavenger’s cart, and people trying to be callous and nice and efficient. He could not efface the memory of Marwood’s eyes, for they were so much like the eyes of his own pre-war self staring at a pock-marked earth instead of at a picture by Millet. Scarsdale had been a sentimentalist. He had believed in love and the lamb and the lily. He had read his Matthew Arnold and his Ruskin in front of a bachelor fire in Canonbury Square while eating buttered toast. He had been a gentle, credulous sort of creature.

Again, Scarsdale raised his hand to the knocker. The rattat had more emphasis than he had intended to give it, and he stood back a little from the door like a shy man who has heard his own voice raised too loudly. He had not greatly wanted to come to No. 53 Spellthorn Terrace, or to get himself mixed up with other people’s emotions. But he had promised Marwood. He listened. He heard a sound of movement on the other side of the door. A key was turned.

The door was opened, but not too widely. He saw a dim face and a dark figure. He was conscious of being looked at, and unwelcomingly so. He raised his hand to the peak of his cap.

“I beg your pardon, is this Mrs. Marwood’s?”

The dim face had an uncompromising stillness. He was very conscious of being scrutinized.

“We don’t want any of you beasts here.”

He realized that the door was being closed, and that the face was being eclipsed by the dark edge. Beasts! But why beasts? His astonishment protested.

“Excuse me, my name’s Scarsdale. I was with Marwood—”

The edge of the door remained motionless.

“You have come from France?”

“Yes. Are you Mrs. Marwood?”

“No. I’m the daughter.”