Читать книгу The Coming of Amos - William J. Locke - Страница 6

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I RANG up the Princess Nadia early in the morning to put off the sitting. She pouted audibly. Wasn’t she really to be permitted to play with the bear? I replied that my studio, with which alone she was concerned, lay apart from whatever private menagerie I chose to keep. To-morrow, when she came, the bear would be chained up. On her dignity, she gave me to understand that I must not reckon on her sitting to-morrow or ever again, if I were so high-handed in my proceedings. As an ultimatum I briefly told her to attend to-morrow at half-past ten, and rang off. She must learn that painting is not a frivolous amusement.

I was not in the mood for work. In spite of the hopes I entertained of Dorothea, Amos weighed heavily on my mind. I found him sitting on the gravel in my little declivitous garden, reading the Continental Daily Mail. He had been up since dawn and, having raided the kitchen for eatables, had gone for a stroll, to stretch his legs. From his account I imagine he had strolled to the Cap d’Antibes and back. He had walked, he informed me, because, having searched the Villa precincts, he couldn’t find a horse. When I informed him that nobody rode in Cannes, his jaw fell in stupefaction. He ejaculated: “Golly, what a country!” I explained that all who could afford it and many who couldn’t went about in motor-cars. He sniffed. They had motor-cars in Warraranga; stupid things that were always bursting their insides. Give him a horse. Or a horse and buggy.... To change the conversation I asked him, casually, if there was any news in the paper.

“It beats me,” said he, tapping the front page; “what’s it all about?”

I glanced at the headlines. Germany and the Reparations and the endeavour of England and France to come to an understanding.

“But I thought we had taken Germany.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled. “How could we take Germany?”

“We won the war, didn’t we?”

“We did.”

“Then if we didn’t take Germany, what did we take?”

What did we take in fact? What answer could I give to this primitive mind? If I told him that since the armistice all that the Allies had struggled to take was precautionary measures against each other, he would not have understood.

“We’re trying to take Germany’s money to pay our war expenses and damages to property and so on, but she professes not to have any. The French Government says she has: the English Government says she hasn’t. Hence the squabble. America declares she has nothing to do with it. President Wilson said that America went into the war so that the world should be safe for Democracy. Democracy has it now, all hands down. Democracy can do whatever it pleases, but it hasn’t the remotest idea of what it pleases it to do.”

The young man rose lumberingly to his feet, an unsightly figure in his shrunken sun-stained clothes, a string of a black tie beneath the flannel collar of his flannel shirt, and his foolish little black bowler hat perched on the top of his great head.

“I’m an ignorant bloke, uncle. Mother said I was. That’s why I promised her to come to Europe to get education. There’s this war. I’ve tried to figure it out, but the Jacksonville Courier didn’t seem to know much. Fellers came back to Warraranga from Gallipoli and France with all sorts of tales about war and I was just shamed I hadn’t gone—but Mother wouldn’t let me—and I listened to them; and I know that millions and millions of men were killed. But what the whole blamed thing was about I don’t know. All I know is that we licked the Germans and I thought we had taken Germany—and it seems we haven’t....” He reflected for a few moments. “Seems as if we got licked,” he said ruminatively. “Mr. Judge, that’s our manager, you know, when we came to fix up Mother’s money, explained that we had to give away a lot of what we earned out of the place to the Australian Government to pay for the war. It all seems wrong somehow.”

“Everything at this moment is as wrong as it can be,” I admitted. “The whole world’s upside down.”

“Whose fault?”

“Germany’s.”

“And this feller here”—he tapped the quotations from the speech of an eminent statesman—“says we must let Germany be prosperous again. It beats me. I sometimes wonder what the Lord’s a-doing of.”

“The Lord?” I queried.

“When Sihon king of the Amorites and Og the king of Bashan went against Israel, He didn’t let ’em grow prosperous. He wiped ’em out and had all their cities destroyed.”

He shook a perplexed head. Whereupon I sat down by his side and endeavoured to explain the European situation.

Later I scuttled him off to Nice in the car with a view to clothing him in garments of good repute; but the only things I could get ready-made that would fit his huge frame were some shirts and a soft felt hat. The idea of being measured and fitted for clothes amused him. In Warraranga when his suit was wearing out beyond his mother’s power of repair he would send to Jacksonville for a “No. 12,” and that was the end of the matter. To choose stuff, colour, pattern and cut had never occurred to him. The suit he wore was his Sunday best and he had had it for five years.

“If I have to dress up like all them folks,” said he, indicating the throng of loungers on the Promenade des Anglais, “it’ll cost a lot of money. Seems silly.”

“You can argue that out with Dorothea,” said I, “and I’m sure you’ll come off second best.”

I felt sure that, for Amos, fear of Dorothea would be the beginning of wisdom.

On our trip I took the opportunity of sounding him as to his financial notions and arrangements. They were vague. He had about fifty pounds in notes and an untouched cheque-book of whose magicality he was innocently certain. In Warraranga he had no dealings with money, his mother having held the tightest of purse-strings. Until her death she had allowed him ten shillings a week, most of which he had saved. Even though he had spent some months going through his affairs with Mr. Judge, Sole Executor, he had not grasped the standard of his fortune. Hence his steerage passage and the purchase—for three and sixpence—of his dreadful billycock hat. No wonder poor Dorcas, when she discovered that living for ever was not the lot of mortals, shivered with apprehension as to her son’s future, and commended him to the guidance of a man of the world. Once he discovered the meaning of wealth, far beyond the command of ten shillings a week, Heaven alone knew what would become of him. God knows what would have become of me, sophisticated young worldling that I was, if I had found myself at five-and-twenty with fifty thousand pounds lying at the bank. Verily, I believe, I should have vermilionized the cosmos!

Amos, however, was docile. I took him, on our return to Cannes, to my bank, guaranteed his Australian cheque for a couple of thousand pounds and thus fixed him up an account for temporary needs. The disposal of his fortune was a matter for future consideration.

In describing these earliest impressions of the coming of Amos I have been forced to dwell on externals. They were the astonishing aspects of him which blazed before my bewildered vision; and I do not know how otherwise to set him down before you. In the great things, Honesty, Truth, Kindliness, he resembled any ordinary decent human being. In the little things, which added together make a total of appalling vastness, he was as far removed from my polite circle as an Esquimau. It was not merely a question of manners. It was a question of blank ignorance of conditions under which the civilized world existed; conditions not only social, but historical, geographical, artistic, religious, economic. At first he could only display himself objectively by behaviour, and subjectively by ingenuous revelations of his history and by uncouth comments on his present unfamiliar environment.

Some days passed. I painted hard at the Princess’s portrait, conducting myself towards her in the severest professional manner. To her enquiries as to the bear, I replied that he was in Nice fitting himself out with a new skin, which was mainly true. I fulfilled various social engagements, luncheon and dinner, and in the intervals kept an eye on Amos, who appeared to be perfectly contented. In Warraranga he had scornfully driven an antiquated Ford car that buck-jumped over irregularities of road surface and a motor-lorry that made roads for itself. Here, in my garage, he picked acquaintance with my chauffeur, Maxime, and a bright 20 h.p. French four-seater which revolutionized, in a day, his idea of motor transport. So much so, that one afternoon, crossing the Croisette, on my way home from lunch, I had to skip, in the most undignified fashion, out of the path of a furiously driven and unhorning car, which, within an ace of killing me, after skidding through violent application of brakes, turned with the apologies of a scared Amos. So much so, as well, that the following day, wishing to use the car, I sauntered into the garage to find that, where once had been an engine, there was nothing but an amorphous heap of bolts and screws and rods and magnetos and carburettors. On the bench, swinging his legs and smoking a cigarette, sat Maxime; and Amos, sweating and blackened, spanner in hand, was playing the devil with what remained of the chassis.

I shouted: “What the blazes are you doing?”

Amos grinned. “Don’t you be afraid. We’ll stick it together again. I had to find out what makes the blamed thing go.”

Although I was put to some inconvenience, I could not but commend his earnestness. Monsieur was an excellent mechanic, said Maxime. Well, he had worked all his life with his hands. Monsieur, continued Maxime, with the respectful familiarity of the French chauffeur who has seen the war and the world, had already begun to learn French, at his instruction. Tenez. He put a grinning Amos through his paces. Boulon. Chambre à air. Jante. Pneu. Vilbrequin ... also Bon jour and Bon soir and Comment allez-vous? I sauntered off content to leave the two together. Amos arrived somewhat contemptuous of a nation which did not speak English; it was beginning to dawn on him that they have a right to their own language which it might be useful for him to learn.

I found him during these few days less of an embarrassment than I had feared. He was a most tractable and obedient creature. I think he regarded me as the Vicegerent of Mother on Earth. The hours of daylight he spent mostly in the open air or the garage. When darkness came, he sprawled his great bulk about the drawing-room and wagged his head over any illustrated English weekly that happened to be to hand. As far as I could make out, the only books he had ever read, apart from the Bible, were The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Fairchild Family; also Adam Lindsay Gordon’s poems of which the surreptitious copy was eventually seized by his mother and cast into the fire as ungodly. He read with great difficulty. As on the first evening of his arrival, he retired to bed soon after dinner.

My painting caused him great puzzlement. Evidently he thought nothing of it; but his native shrewdness told him that it must deserve serious consideration. He compared unfavourably my unfinished portrait of the Princess Nadia with one or two photographs she had brought to shew me and had left lying about. The photographs were much more like her. As for my landscapes, he could not correlate my interpretation of Nature with Nature itself. Besides, he could not see the use of it. This magic coast of azure awoke in him no sense of beauty. It was merely strange, almost risible in its difference from the plains of limitless horizons whence he had come. Of the Corniche Road he said that it was funny to feel as if you were always going to fall off. The mystery of blue sea and grey rock and white towns gleaming in the golden air moved him not at all.... Yet when I made a quick charcoal sketch of him, one afternoon, he was delighted. To him, it was my masterpiece.

Still, for all his big dog’s docility, I let day follow day, still continuing not to know what the devil to do with him.

I am exceedingly fond of my step-daughter, Dorothea; but never was I more glad to see her than when I caught sight of her sensible head poked out of the train window at Cannes station.

She is brown-haired, rosy, plump and capable; fairly tall; and, unlike her partner, she doesn’t dress like a heathen embroidered-bag-merchant. She is of the modern world, very neat and spruce. She wore an iron-grey coat and skirt and a silver fox round her throat, and between that and a cocky little tam-o’-shantery red hat, her honest face shone pleasantly. At the end of this London-Cannes journey I feel like a sick rag and know I look it. She was all exuberant youth, trimmed and tidied and unfatigued.

She glanced around among the hurrying passengers and porters.

“Where is he?”

“Who?”

“The young man of the Stone Age. Oh, I am disappointed.”

“For the present I’m keeping him in the garage.”

She passed her arm through mine.

“Is it as bad as that? Poor old Daddums. In your letter I couldn’t disentangle the truth from the picturesque. You’re a bit of an artist in your way, you know. I’m dying to see him.”

Maxime possessed himself of her hand-luggage, and arm in arm we descended the steps and passed through the underground passage on our way to the exit side. For a moment she forgot Amos in the joy of the South. How lovely it was to smell garlic again. She had been standing by the open window almost since Marseilles, drenching her senses with the perfumed blue and gold of the Midi. Dirty yellow fog in London; raw mist in the Channel; cold rain in Paris. Then darkness, nothingness, the rumble and clatter and the deathly silences of the train. Sleep. Sudden shafts of light between blinds and window jambs. Up with the blinds—she had travelled with a Nice-bound woman who had never seen the South before—and then the world flooded with the young laughter of the morning sunshine, and afterwards the Mediterranean and the aching beauty of its azure promise.

“There’s nothing like it in the wide world, that first glimpse of the sea before Marseilles. Oh damn—— Pardon, madame,” said my young woman, who was for sailing through the barrier without delivering up her ticket for which she must search her bag. “Nothing in the world,” she continued ecstatically. “It is a promise. Talk about syrens singing!”

We entered the car. Maxime threw the rug around us. Yes, he had Mademoiselle’s dressing-case in front. Had he ever forgotten anything belonging to Mademoiselle? Yes. That basket of figs two years ago at Saint-Jeannet. He threw up his hands. Ah! Mademoiselle was unforgiving. She commanded. Not straight home; up the street and out by the Carlton so that she could have the sweep of the Croisette. In laughter we started, ascended the busy Rue d’Antibes, the Bond Street of the Riviera, Bond Street not even in miniature, with its silly narrow pavement and its silly narrow roadway, and the lure of its luxurious shop windows—and on to the Croisette, the sea-front of Cannes. Dorothea clutched my arm. Wasn’t it wonderful, the redemption of the morning’s promise? Even I, hardened to the coast’s eternal loveliness, drew a quick breath of wonder. To the east, the green island of St. Marguerite stood on a sea of ultramarine, insulting in its challenge; and, as the eye swept westward, the pride of dying splendour softened in the light of a pure amber in which the still obedient sea melted into sunlit tones of purple and pale mauve, washing the quays above which rose clear in yellow and red the terraces of the Suquet, the old town, surmounted by its two square towers, that have watched for centuries, across the infinitely changing sea, the coasts of Africa and its romantic perils. And behind and beyond, in serrated gradations of menace, pleasantness and comfort, dwindled to a smiling point the long line of the Esterel, dark and mysterious save for a bastioned forefront of tender olive. A couple of white sails flecked the eastern ultramarine. In the oily mauve of the west, bleached by the sun, floated one little boat, with one little man handling an oar in the stern. And in the port the tapering masts of the yachts stood out in delicate tracery against the sky.

“Tell me brutally that I’m an idiot to spend my days in a fusty little shop in South Molton Street,” said Dorothea.

I obeyed. She laughed, the best and most understanding of friends.

“I suppose you know I’ve sent word to Claude to come along,” she remarked casually.

“Claude? Hasn’t that young warrior got anything to do yet?”

This was my other nephew, Captain Claude Worthington, the son of Tom, the bishop, and my sister Muriel who on vague pretext of health had wandered pleasantly about the coast for the past two seasons. Fortunately for everybody, Muriel had not commended him to my semi-paternal care.

“He’s selling Dutroyen cars in London. They’re going like hot cakes he tells me. I gave him the idea to come down and sell them to the English and Americans on the Riviera.”

“Dorothea, Dorothea,” said I. “How many residents or birds of passage are going to buy Claude’s cars?”

“None,” she replied cheerfully. “Does it matter?”

“I see that young man yet standing behind your embroidered-bag counter.”

She laughed. “I wish he would. We’d grow rich.”

“You’re utterly devoid of conscience, Dorothea,” said I severely. “But hitherto you have observed certain rules of discipline. I expect you to continue. Claude is not going to have the run of the Villa. He can come to tea once a week.”

“He’ll go off his head with joy,” she murmured.

I continued. “I didn’t take the trouble to send for you so that you could dance at the Casino with Claude Worthington.”

It’s well from time to time to put these young women in their places. She regarded me demurely.

“That’s awfully clever of you, Daddums.” Then after a pause, “How does Amos dance?”

“You’ll see,” said I.

The car tore up the steep Rue Georges Clemenceau, the new unimaginative name for the old Rue de Fréjus, and stopped at the Villa. We leaped out. François opened the door. Between respectful expression of delight at seeing Mademoiselle and a certain excited agitation, his speech became unintelligible. I gathered, but paid no attention to, an announcement that there was a monsieur in the salon, and, throwing open the drawing-room door, entered with Dorothea.

There was a gentleman in the salon, a thin, shifty-eyed, would-be smartly, but seedily, dressed fellow of forty, sprawling before the fire and smoking (I nosed it before I saw it) one of my Corona Coronas. And on the other side of the fire sat Amos, in his shirt-sleeves, the discarded coat and waistcoat on a distant chair.

At the sight of the standing lady, Amos rose, according to promise. The other man rose too. Amos smiled pleasantly and ducked his head.

“This Cousin Dorothea?”

“Yes,” said I curtly. “But will you kindly introduce me to your friend?”

“Captain Foljambe,” said the seedy man.

“I met the Captain in the Croisette,” Amos explained.

“I happened to be in temporary difficulties,” said Captain Foljambe hurriedly. “And between one gentleman and another—in fact—” he turned to Amos—“You have my address—Guards’ Club. I won’t intrude any longer. Good-bye.”

Amos was about to grip him cordially by the hand when I interposed.

“Wait a bit. You’ve been giving this person money?”

“A trifle, a trifle,” said Captain Foljambe. “Enough to get to Paris, where I have heaps of funds. Between gentlemen——”

“How much?”

Amos regarded me for a moment, and then flushed brick-red.

“You mind your own business, Uncle David. Here’s a poor bloke down and out. Knocked down in the streets of Monte Carlo and robbed of everything—watch, jewellery, bank-notes. The poor fellow hasn’t eaten for two days. Walked here—was going to walk to Paris on an empty stomach, eating nuts and blackberries. ‘Naked and hungry you’ve taken me in.’ That’s the Scriptures. So Ameely’s cooking him a meal of ham and eggs. And he’s a gentleman, a captain in the Guards.” He challenged me. “Haven’t I the right in this country to help a fellow-creature in distress?”

“For a man who hasn’t eaten for forty-eight hours,” said I, “Captain Foljambe is managing to do very well on a strong cigar. Also officers of the Guards usually have credit that can tide them over temporary difficulties, and they know they can’t gather nuts and blackberries from the hedges in January. Furthermore, an honest man cleaned out at Monte Carlo can always get the viatique to take him home. How much have you advanced to this gentleman?”

“Only his second-class fare to Paris—a thousand francs,” replied Amos.

“The second-class fare to Paris is two hundred and fifty francs,” said I.

I held out my hand to the seedy crook in expressive gesture. Dorothea, without being told, put her finger on the bell-push. Level-headed girl, Dorothea. The man hesitated. Evidently the ingenuous Amos had not advised him of my cynical existence. François appeared. Said I:

“Will you give me the note, or shall I telephone to the Commissariat of Police?”

“Your friend’s story is not quite accurate,” said Captain Foljambe—“I mean in matter of detail. But still—to avoid unpleasantness—as between gentlemen——”

“Confound you!” I cried, “if you say that again I’ll have you locked up at once.”

He fished in his trouser pocket for the thousand franc note, handed it to me and swaggered out of the room, followed by the vigilant François.

Amos passed his great hand over his upstanding hair.

“D’ye mean that that educated, pleasant-spoken feller’s a crook?”

“An honest man would have defended himself,” said Dorothea.

“I suppose you’re right, miss,” said Amos.

He made a turn or two about the room and then threw himself into a chair.

“By gosh! Did you ever hear of such wickedness!” And after a pause, “Such a kind, nice feller. Talked like anything. Knew Australia too. Sent out specially to organize artillery in Melbourne before the war.”

Dorothea smiled. “Curious job for a Guardsman, wasn’t it?”

“I dunno, miss,” said Amos abjectly.

I made an impatient step—the credulity of the fool was unimaginable. I began.

“You——!”

Dorothea, still hatted and coated, waved me a swift, arresting gesture. I swallowed my wrath. Amos sat, bent forward, his head bowed in his hands. The wood fire was burning low. Dorothea took his coat and waistcoat from the chair and touched him on the shoulder. He started up.

“It’s getting cold,” she said. “In this treacherous climate it’s dangerous to sit in one’s shirt-sleeves.”

He lumbered to his feet. She smiled at him before she made him turn so that she could help him on with the garments.

“Besides,” she said, “you look so much nicer.”

He shuffled round, buttoning his waistcoat.

“That true?”

“Solemn true,” she smiled.

“My dear,” said I, “you’ve been travelling God knows how many hours and you’re longing for warm water and soap. Everything’s ready for you. Go along.”

“I think I will,” she said. And to Amos: “I’ll see you later.”

He grinned at her. Impatiently I snapped my fingers.

“Open the door for your cousin.”

He obeyed in some perplexity. She swept graciously past him. But as she went I heard him say:

“Don’t you think I don’t know what you meant when you said I looked nicer.”

There are quite interesting cells in the brain of Amos.